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Appalling actions in Lodi
“I was appalled,” Lodi Mayor Karen Viscana said on hearing the news. Her reaction suggested she had learned of some recent calamity. Perhaps Mayor Viscana was reacting to the Myanmar government’s continued refusal to admit aid workers to the country to assist cyclone victims? But no, that was not it. She was not responding to a disaster on that scale or, for that matter, on any scale. What the mayor found so repellent was that the town’s zoning officer, Joel Lavin, had approved an application for a methadone clinic within the town.

Enact statewide keg registration
January 16, 2008 - Gov. Jon Corzine’s Teen Driving Study Commission recently held a hearing to gather testimony on how to reduce the number of accidents involving young drivers. An aspect of this issue that, despite its long history, still needs greater attention is the combination of youth drinking and driving. NCADD-NJ provided the commission with data on keg registration demonstrating that the policy is an effective means of both reducing youth alcohol use and the car wrecks that result.

Recovery for addiction recovery
September 13, 2007 - September is designated National Addiction Recovery Month, which focuses on what is sometimes called ‘the other side of addiction.’ That other side is not well understood by many of the public, despite the fact that alcohol and drug problems affect nearly one in three families in New Jersey, according to a survey commissioned by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence-New Jersey.

Parity a remedy to health care costs
June 27, 2007 - A recent guest opinion in the Bergen Record, “Don’t add to businesses’ already high health costs,” stated that the reason mental health and addiction parity legislation is so controversial is because no one is addressing the vital issue of cost. Whatever one thinks of New Jersey’s parity legislation, S-807/A-2512, it defies logic and shuns all evidence to suggest it ignores cost.

Parity fosters economic health
May 22, 2007 - A recent Home News Tribune editorial supported the measure before the New Jersey Legislature to require insurance coverage for mental illness and addiction equal to what is provided for other medical conditions. The reason for issue’s steady advance through the state Legislature is not a simply a matter of fairness.

Keg registration will choke a source of alcohol for youth
March 8, 2007 - When police broke up a recent keg party at a house in East Brunswick, their arrival was obviously unwelcome by the teenagers in attendance. What is troubling about the high school students’ reaction to the police is the youth seemed to feel they had had their rights violated. Their right, that is, to be intoxicated.

Celebrity cases continue to give rise to skepticsim on addiction
October 24, 2006 - There has lately been a handful of public figures – actors and politicians – proclaiming themselves alcoholics. These outpourings come, for the most part, on the heals of some humiliation that in itself is all but unpardonable.

NCADD-NJ presses for tax increase, treatment dedication
May 25, 2006 - NCADD – New Jersey fully supports Parent to Parent’s Just A Nickel a Gallon campaign to dedicate $10 million from Governor Corzine’s expected $15 million increase in alcohol tax revenue to the Alcohol Education Rehabilitation and Enforcement Fund (AEREF). The AEREF disburses $11 million annually to counties for addiction prevention and treatment and drunken driving enforcement efforts. This allocation has not changed since 1992.

Parity legislation needs support of Corzine
Jan. 19, 2006 - Incoming Gov. Jon Corzine immediately set a tone of reform in the state in the weeks before he took the oath of office. An issue greatly in need of his attention that has nothing to do with pay to play but that is critical to the state’s well-being would require health insurers to cover addiction and mental illnesses as they do other medical conditions.

Time for a Youth Alcohol Use Task Force
August 8, 2005 - In creating a Task Force on Steroid Use, Acting Gov. Richard Codey declared an emergent public health crisis and that, in response, New Jersey would not bury its head in the sand.

NCADD-NJ proposes 5-cent alcohol tax increase
May 20, 2005 - NCADD – New Jersey is proposing an increase in the alcohol excise tax by five cents per gallon and having the new revenue dedicated to expanding the state’s addiction treatment capacity.

Budget talks must recognize consensus on treatment needs
Feb. 22, 2005 - As Acting Gov. Richard Codey readies his Budget Address and the state Legislature begins its review of his budget proposal, New Jersey’s decision-makers should keep in mind that a single point bridged the polarizing divide between supporters and detractors of needle exchange: New Jersey’s need for more addiction treatment.

Blase' attitude towards youth drinking persists
Nov. 29, 2004 - It is somewhat difficult to understand the nonchalance toward undergraduate drinking expressed in a recent letter to the editor by Hopewell resident Eric Houghton. Mr. Houghton commented sarcastically on the Trenton Times bothering to do a story on the arrest of college football players attempting to buy beer, which in his view was such a commonplace as to be a non-story. His viewpoint comes after a spate of well-publicized campus drinking deaths this fall has brought renewed attention to the issue.

Needle exchange bill must contain treatment, education components
Sept. 8, 2004 - The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence – New Jersey (NCADD-NJ) has followed with great interest the recent push by Gov. James McGreevey and some members of the Legislature for a syringe access and/or exchange in the state. NCADD-NJ’s position on this important public health issue is predicated on the belief that, in addition to HIV/AIDS, there is another progressive, chronic, and potentially fatal disease affecting the intravenous drug user that needs intervention – the disease of addiction.

Federal initiative emphasizes recovery is possible
August 27, 2004 - The announcement that New Jersey has been awarded one of 15 federal Access to Recovery grants to expand addiction treatment over the next three years would be welcome at any time. Coming as it did with the approach of September’s Recovery Month celebration, the news serves to affirm that an investment in treatment is, ultimately, an investment in restoring lives.

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