My best friend and his wonderful Mother whom I love.www.SCADD.com

Yesterday I briefly touched on the current state of the City of Norwich and the problems plaguing the once thriving City. I also mentioned the propensity for the youth of this area to not only use but sell the narcotics that seem to be everywhere these days. This is a photo of my best friend. He is currently incarcerated on charges of possessing and distributing drugs. My friend is not a bad person, he just has had issues with drug addiction and I am not about to pass judgement of anyone with issues of that nature. I myself am a former drug addict and drug dealer. If you Google my name I'm sure you can find out about my trials and tribulations in the drug trafficking business. Heroin and other opiates are running rampant over this entire state and have been for the last ten years. What does the State of Connecticut try to do in order to solve this problem? Lock up every single addict, and those with mental health and addiction issues, that they can possibly arrest. Now if anyone has been following the problems with the Connecticut Department of Corrections then you know how well this strategy has turned out for the almost bankrupt state. Prison populations are at almost twenty thousand inmates and the State can't support the numbers, at almost thirty six thousand dollars a year per inmate, and prison's closing due to lack of funding, things are coming to a head. There are also no long term drug programs left in this State to offer some kind of treatment for all these addicts. Drug addicts make up the majority of the prison population and are considered low level inmates and not deemed as threats to society. Why can't the state do something to get these people help? Programs like DayTop, Help Inc., and Brooklyn Bridge are fading fast and soon there is going to be no help or treatment at all for the rising number of drug addicts being arrested, convicted, and imprisoned. Once these men and women are convicted felons it is harder to rehabilitate them, educate them, and find them meaningful work that is actually going deter them from going back out and selling the drugs they live and die for. Take my friend for example. He tried to find work and only had misdemeanor convictions but with the poor state of the economy it was impossible for him to make enough money to survive. Desperation turns to depression, turns to using drugs to not deal with the depression, turns to selling the drugs to support the habit and make enough money to pay the bills, and ends up with arrest and conviction. People are always going to get high but there has to be alternatives to locking them all up. Prison isn't helping these types of individuals, in fact it is exposing them to even more addicts to network with when they are released. My friend doesn't deserve to be in jail. He should be in a fucking drug program getting the help he needs to rebuild his life and become a positive member of society. The idiots running this country and this State have run both right into the fucking ground. As the American Dollar declines and the countries prisons are packed full of now unemployable people, the economy will continue to spiral down the drain until our so called recession is a depression if it isn't already. Norwich needs to take it's proverbial head out of it's ass and take a look around at what is really going on. The Casino's haven't helped us at all. Quite the opposite actually. They attract the drug dealers from New York and else where that get YOUR children hooked who then have to sell the product to support their own habit leading them to arrest and confinement. There are alternatives to this fucked up cycle. Believe me I know. I am a former addict and a convicted felon who has been through the system and knows people on both ends of the spectrum. There are some good men and women out there trying to make a difference, like my friends at SCADD, but they are too few and far between. This Country and our City need to address the real problems of our citizens before we can ever hope to become what we once were. When I was a child growing up here and the City was prosperous, it didn't have these issues to the same extent it does today. Maybe that should tell everyone something. Hint, hint, wink, wink....