Drug Addiction Rises Nationwide, Little Being Done in Retaliation

Substance abuse cripples San Antonians, calling for more drug counselors

Frequent drug abuse and the consequential addiction to certain legal and illegal substances have destroyed the lives of countless Americans, with an upward trend in drug-related deaths soaring past the 50,000 mark in 2015 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The opioid crisis is largely to blame, proving responsible for nearly 10,000 of those recorded deaths as detailed in the same report.

Heroin, an overtly lethal drug when taken out of moderation, is the only one that surpassed synthetic opioids as the benefactor for almost 13,000 drug-induced fatalities.

But there are more ways than just death to destroy one’s life, and addiction to drugs as harmless as marijuana or over-the-counter pharmaceuticals can negatively transform the lives of anyone.

San Antonio, much like the rest of the nation, faces a substance abuse epidemic in lieu of mass drug trafficking across national borders.

Opoiod addiction is strongest among urbanized centers of the American south, with San Antonio holding the highest rate of children born with health complications due to maternal opoiod abuse.

SAC alumni and counselor intern Chris Lopez works at the NW San Antonio Treatment Center and shared his sentiment about the growing problem of opoiod abuse in the city.

“People aren’t bad, they just make bad decisions” Lopez said in a Sept. 26 interview. “In low-income areas of San Antonio, they face struggles everyday and decide to turn to these substances.”

In San Antonio alone, over 795,000 pounds of marijuana, 8,000 pounds of cocaine, 500 pounds of methamphetamine and 110 pounds of heroin were hauled within the city limits in 2016, according to the San Antonio police department website.

With massive amounts of illegal substances, in addition to prescription drugs legally purchased at local pharmacies, a report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration states that over 12 percent of the 1.4 million living in San Antonio are likely to be addicted to some form of drug.

This threat is intensified by the city’s close proximity to the Mexican-American border, where the flow of illegal substances being transported between South Texas and Mexico has labeled San Antonio as one of the country’s “High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas” by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

The prevalent issues with drug abuse are not restricted to health complications later in life, as many who defy the law to acquire these substances are “75 percent more likely to tumble down the slippery slope of the criminal justice system,” according to the National Institute of Justice.

Lopez said that many of the 620 to 700 patients treated everyday at the treatment center are “young and troubled,” turning them to crime when no other option seems available.

“Generational drug abuse is the real problem here. Children learn from their parents, and that becomes the norm.”

The San Antonio Treatment Center is one of ten different treatment clinics in San Antonio that offer methadone, an opoiod medication that Lopez said “blocks opoiod recepters from that feeling of euphoria, allowing patients to function normally.”

Even then, the city’s funding for drug treatment institutions is largely inadequate, but Lopez believes attention should be directed towards prevention programs.

“Opoiod-specific prevention programs in elementary schools at low-income regions in San Antonio are essential,” Lopez said. “We aren’t making a great enough effort to inform our youth of the consequences they may know of, but don’t fully understand.”

Despite the city’s lack of funding and attention for drug-afflicted areas in San Antonio, there is a silver lining for those who wish to help these addicted individuals.

The drug counseling field has grown exponentially as substance abuse gained slightly prominent national attention, with courses offered under the Human Services program at SAC providing students the means to become apart of the solution.

Without having to attend a four-year institution, SAC students may become eligible for Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor (LCDC) & Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) licensure attainment and renewal, allowing them to work as drug counselors under the Texas Department of State Health Services after just two years.

SAC’s Human Services program was the first in Texas to be accredited by the National Addiction Studies Accreditation Commission.

A projected 22 percent employment growth rate is expected by 2024 in the drug counseling field according to U.S. News, ranking the occupation as #5 in the best social services jobs to pursue.

This number will only continue to escalate under the new parameters implemented by the justice system, as drug offenders are receiving “treatment-oriented sentences” as opposed to jail time.

Substance abuse is a growing problem in San Antonio and beyond, and without adequate funding and a steady influx of individuals into the drug counseling market, it may transcend beyond the realm of feasible limitation.

 

Editor’s note — I took a brief hiatus from my fledgling creation to address personal issues that were plaguing my life, but I intend to restore TMR to its original intent: a weekly political blog. This particular article is the rough draft I wrote for The Ranger of San Antonio College and, as such, the format drastically deviates from my inaugural literature regarding DACA. If I don’t manage to provide an updated, more in-depth analysis of drug addiction and its political pretenses by this weekend, then next week’s article will return to my initial stylistic approach.

The Literacy Behind DACA

A brief history into U.S. immigration policy and its pertinence to DACA

Immigration has long since been an emphatically controversial point of congressional discussion, riddled with esoteric uncertainties and sequestered intolerances that have largely shaped the bureaucratic landscape for immigration policymaking since the late nineteenth century, infamously originating with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

Over time, the United States has consistently procured a distinctive mindset regarding the immigrant population, a detrimental perspective that oftentimes coincided with the ongoing political, social, and economic incongruities of each generation. It has transpired in the form of invidious, ethnically-centered restrictions that rendered preliminary entry into the U.S. nearly impossible, if not entirely so.

From the aforementioned Chinese Exclusion Act to the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924, the McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 to Operation Wetback of 1954, the legislative process has historically been gratuitously exploited to depict the respectively prevalent influx of certain immigrants as the root of the nation’s problems, particularly during unforgiving periods of economic crisis.

It wasn’t until the Hart-Celler Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, shepherded by the ongoing civil rights movement, that the federal government actively drafted measures that forbade the brazen attempts of legislators to institute blatantly discriminatory immigration policies. However, despite the amiable intentions of these largely progressive lawmakers to liberalize immigration policy under the Johnson administration, the heavily-revised, quota-intensive Hart-Celler Act ushered forth a tremendous surge of illegal immigrants into the country that persists today.

A prolonged trend of generally liberal legislation and federal case decisions over the next several decades gradually defined the status of undocumented immigrants, ultimately discerning whether or not an immigrant has committed a federal or civil offense that in turn determines their legality.

This perpetual alteration of immigration reform, in accordance with the copious overflow of undocumented immigrants into predominantly border states, laid the foundation for certain state legislatures and eventually the federal government to address the undeniable shift in their demographic climate as minority groups – primarily Hispanics — are collectively surpassing the ‘white majority,’ hastening what the U.S. Census Bureau theorizes will transform the United States into a majority-minority country by 2055.

Texas was first among those states, pioneering the cause by passing the Texas Dream Act of 2001 (HB 1403) as an indirect predecessor to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals bill implemented by the Obama administration in 2012.

Thematically similar to DACA, the Texas Dream Act provides accommodation for undocumented students that spent the majority of their adolescent years in the United States, adhering specifically to the Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe (1982) that definitively declared that all individuals, regardless of documentation, are included in the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and therefore legally entitled to public education.

Texas was far from secluded in their attempts at uncharacteristically pro-immigration directives, with the Texas Dream Act drawing inspiration from a larger, more encompassing federal DREAM Act. The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors bill was a bipartisan legislative effort that commenced in 2001 but, despite a relentless, continual campaign at the behest of a tiring base of progressive politicians, failed on numerous occasions throughout the course of the past 16 years.

The DREAM Act last gained considerable momentum during the midterm elections of former President Barack Obama’s first term, but due to insurmountable obstacles corresponding directly with partisan politics, the DREAM Act failed once more and presented a passable rationale for Obama to solely dictate the direction of immigration reform.

Despite lacking both the congressional and constitutional authority to enact DACA, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reports that Obama managed to bestow protections upon about 800,000 immigrants that illegally entered the United States as children, over 1,000 of which attend a higher education institution either within the Alamo Colleges district or the several four-year universities San Antonio offers.

These immigrants, more commonly referred to as “Dreamers,” are “threads in the American tapestry, adding fibers of other cultures into the fabric of America,” insists Professor Christy Woodward-Kaupert, the Political Science Program Coordinator at San Antonio College who obtained her Masters in Political Science at Sam Houston State University.

“These immigrants are acculturated and many are, by the third generation, fully assimilated” into the framework of American society, which ascribes to Woodward-Kaupert’s assertion that the Dreamers are “no less American than the rest of us.”

The premise behind DACA, to put it simply, permits unlawfully present immigrants that were nonconsensually relocated across American borders under the age of 16 to apply for lawful status, essentially granting them amnesty from federal extradition across renewable two-year intervals.

Contrary to popular belief, the prerequisites for DACA recipients are moderately restrictive, offering reprieves of deportation for only 7% of the undocumented immigrant population, which was recorded to be 11.3 million as of 2016 by the Pew Research Center.

The guidelines for aspiring recipients are listed below:

1. Were under the age of 31 as of June 15^th, 2012;
2. Came to the United States before reaching your 16^th birthday;
3. Have continuously resided in the United States on June 15^th, 2007, up to the present time;
4. Were physically present in the United States on June 15^th, 2012, and at the time of making your request for consideration of deferred action with USCIS;
5. Had no lawful status on June 15^th, 2012;
6. Are currently in school, have graduated or obtained a certificate of completion from high school, have obtained a general education development (GED) certificate, or are an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the United States; and
7. Have not been convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor, or three or more other misdemeanors, and do not otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety.

[U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, link here]

These restrictions theoretically ensure that only productive, undocumented members of the millennial generation are eligible for DACA’s benefits, which leading generational theorists Neil Howe and William Strauss define as anyone born from 1982 to 2004. This remains true for members of the youngest generation, which some refer to as Generation Z.

In any case, the Trump administration resolved to rescind DACA on Tuesday of last week and consequentially obstruct the admission of any future DACA recipients, allocating a six-month window for Congress to reinstate a permanent alternative within the realm of constitutionality.

His decision comes as no surprise to millions of Americans as many perceive this administration’s recent efforts as Trump’s commitment to last year’s campaign promises of “railing against illegal immigration” and “reversing Obama’s unconstitutional executive actions,” despite grievances over ethical complications in regards to an objectively faultless party.

The public’s opinion of Trump’s decision is misguided, however, as the driving force behind the termination of DACA is a congregation of Republican attorneys general governed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who threatened to “launch a legal challenge against DACA” unless Trump “phased out the unlawful actions” imposed by the policy by Sept. 5.

Many candidly denounce the president’s actions, disparagingly decrying him as an individual motivated by inherently prejudicial inclinations without thoroughly immersing themselves within the political context of the situation.

Even the Republican assembly championing the anti-DACA movement have illustrated their intentions as an unequivocal condemnation of the White House’s continuous misappropriation of the executive order, a reoccurring pattern amongst presidents that transcends beyond partisanship and political affiliations.

Although classifying DACA as unconstitutional can be considered presumptive due to the absence of official judiciary appraisal, Obama – a Harvard Law School graduate who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School – repeatedly contended that he couldn’t “just bypass Congress and change the [immigration] law myself” in response to increasing demands for unilateral immigration reform in 2010 following the failure of the federal DREAM Act.

Yet despite his previous reservations, Obama circumvented congressional authorization by enacting an executive order that rewrote pre-established immigration laws and integrated DACA into legislative authority two years later, strategically incorporated into the legal infrastructure just five months prior to the 2012 presidential election.

As such, the principal justification behind discontinuing DACA is one of constitutional adherence, a stark contrast to the predominantly discriminatory policies of the past that specifically targeted different sects of the immigrant population.

Even then, the fundamental deliberation surrounding DACA is between the significance of legal statutes over moral authority (and vice versa), a prominent source of ostentatious dissension that heralds back to the explication of an undocumented immigrant’s legality and the ethical ramifications of inflicting punishment upon, again, a largely blameless party.

The USCIS has disclosed that Dreamers whose “work permits expire before March 5, 2018” may apply for a two-year renewal if they meet the upcoming Oct. 5 deadline. DACA recipients should remain wary, however, as the Department of Homeland Security recently issued an ominous statement warning that the department will “continue to exercise its discretionary authority to terminate or deny deferred action for any reason, at any time, with or without notice.”

Until then, full responsibility for yielding a plausible substitute rests firmly upon Congress’ shoulders, with President Trump delegating unconditional jurisdiction to both legislative houses under the six-month time frame.

Congressional leaders are optimistic regarding the prospect of a viable resolution to the Dreamer dilemma, with House Speaker Paul Ryan espousing the prevailing feasibility of “finding a consensus on a permanent legislative solution that includes ensuring that those who have done nothing wrong can still contribute as a valued part of this great country.”

Similarly, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed his sympathies for these “young people who were brought here at a tender age and have grown up here,” advocating for a “lawful system of immigration” while simultaneously supporting a bipartisan collaboration to protect the Dreamers from deportation.

A joint effort is required in order to safeguard the future of over 800,000 undocumented immigrants from both Democratic and Republican delegates, although a history of unproductive congressional discord may render such an ambitious endeavor exceedingly arduous.

If Congress fails to satisfy the predetermined stipulations that both parties propose in accordance with constitutional considerations, aspirations of a renewed DACA will likely dwindle as the last of the Dreamers will eventually deteriorate into a state of administrative demoralization by October 2019, ushering forth a merciless wave of mass deportation.