End Discrimination

At its core, addiction to alcohol or other drugs is a chronic, relapsing condition, much like high blood pressure, asthma, or diabetes. Treatment for addiction can be as effective as treatments for other chronic conditions.

Yet rampant discrimination against people with addictions restricts their access to education, housing, employment, financial assistance, and health care, which often discourages people from seeking treatment.

The American Bar Association and Join Together formed a national policy panel, representing a cross section of the legal and judicial communities, the scientific community, and policy leaders, to develop recommendations that will focus on laws, policies, rules, and practices in the workplace, by insurers, by local, state, or federal government, or in the use of methadone and other medications that present obstacles to people pursuing recovery and treatment.

Examples include:

• A Fifth Circuit ruling that people in recovery from alcohol addiction are not protected by the ADA unless their illness is so extreme that they have permanent, debilitating conditions that would render them unable to perform the essential duties of employment;
  
  
• Insurance policies that deny or restrict coverage for substance abuse treatment;
  
  
• The Uniform Individual Accident and Sickness Policy Provision, which permits insurance carriers to reject claims for the care of any injury sustained by an insured patient who was intoxicated or under the influence of drugs at the time of the injury;
  
  
• The "Drug Free Student Aid" provision of the U.S. Higher Education Act, which denies financial aid to students with a history of an illegal drug offense;
  
  
• The 1996 welfare reform provision imposing a lifetime ban on welfare benefits for people convicted of possessing or selling drugs;
  
  
• Zoning regulations that ban treatment centers or sober housing;
  
  
• A federal code that allows evictions of tenants from public housing if the tenant, any member of the tenant's household, or any guest engages in drug-related criminal activity on or off the premises;
  
  
• A widely-accepted Department of Justice policy to refuse methadone to inmates addicted to heroin;
  
  
• Treatment programs that require total abstinence from all substances, even those required for disabling medical conditions;
  
  
• Drug courts that will not accept defendants who are in methadone treatment;
  
  
• Efforts to fight discrimination could help millions of people with substance use problems get effective treatment, instead of blocking their recovery with unequal and inadequate insurance policies, rules against medication use, and unfair employment regulations. Acting against discrimination now will help many people immediately, and will pave the way for emerging approaches to help many more.