The Children of Drug Abuse - A Convenient and Intentional Omission

The Externalities of Drug Offenses:  When people talk about the decriminalization of drug offenses, it’s as if there are no externalities to addictive, psychoactive compounds.  It would be nice if the drug addict simply funded his or her drug use with overtime shifts and simply got high in the privacy of their own home – doing harm to no one but themselves.  This assumption has many flaws, but today I just wanted to address the impact of drug use on the children of the drug abusers. 

Drug Abuse and the Children of the Users:  Here is an excerpt from my book – it is so easy for legalization advocates to look past the impact of drug abuse on the children of these households, but such omissions ignore the daily disasters to millions of vulnerable children …

A Columbia University study found that substance abuse is a factor in at least 70 percent of all reported cases of child abuse.  In addition to the abuse itself, the ramifications for vulnerable children extend beyond criminal abuse. A total of 8.3 million children live in a home with a substance-dependent or substance-addicted parent—that astronomical number is greater than the combined populations of New Mexico, Mississippi, and Arkansas. These children “are also more likely to have poor physical, intellectual, social, and emotional outcomes and are at greater risk of developing substance abuse problems themselves.”  Injustice for All: The (Familiar) Fallacies of Criminal Justice Reform, Brian Surber (True Blue Publishing,, LLC, 2021), p. 44. 

The Takeaway:  Pretending that drug abuse only harms the user is by design – to acknowledge the multitude of harms to others (including children), is to make the case for criminalizing drug offenses.  Expect continued propaganda in the criminal justice reform movement … and expect those in public safety to counter the same with facts and evidence.