By Chris Meehan, Kalamazoo Gazette, October 2, 2004.

The Rev. Edwin Sanders first fought a crusade to create better health care for people infected with and affected by HIV/AIDS.

But then, as the minister from Nashville, Tenn., pushed for expanded services on that front, he began to see a greater problem underlying the disease that attacks the human immune system.

Drug abuse and how the legal system handles it, Sanders realized, were issues to which he needed to devote a larger portion of his energy and ministry.

Many people with HIV/AIDS, especially those he visited in prisons, had been infected as a result of their drug abuse, he said.

The problem went well beyond HIV/AIDS, however, and dealt with federal dollars being spent on the war on drugs to keep people in jail, instead of seeking to rehabilitate them.

“I saw that our country’s response to the issue of addiction has been ineffective,” said Sanders, who was in Kalamazoo recently to take part in a panel that debated the validity of the U.S. war on drugs.

“If we have been fighting a war, it is a war that has failed and been lost,” he said in an interview before he participated in the panel at Western Michigan University’s Bernhard Center.

The nation spent about $1.5 billion in 1980 to fight the war on drugs. By 2003, that amount had surpassed $20 billion, he said.

“Our resources aren’t being spent as they need be. The lock-’em-up-and-throw-away-the-key mentality of the last 25 years hasn’t worked,” Sanders said.

The focus of this fight, he said, should be on treatment and maintenance programs for addicts, particularly for minorities who tend to be the ones put in jail and not given a chance for treatment and rehabilitation.

His Church Reaches Out

His own church — Metropolitan Interdenominational Church in Nashville — has developed a range of programs and ministries to address the needs of addicts and of those impacted by HIV/AIDS.

About 30 percent of his more-than-500-member congregation are recovering addicts.

“We are a place willing to help develop better behaviors,” Sanders said. “We engage people caught up in the cycle of addiction. We create a relationship with them and steer them toward treatment and then recovery.”

Sanders said he supports efforts such as one announced last week by the recently organized Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative.

That group is a coalition of religious organizations that has voiced support for a bill that would repeal federal mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders, and vowed to fight a competing bill aimed at strengthening current laws.

The Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative brought together leaders from a broad base of religious organizations and the NAACP recently to support a bill by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.

“We cannot incarcerate our way out of our country’s drug problem,” Waters said.

More than 20 organizations are opposed to mandatory minimum sentences, including the National Council of Churches, the United Methodist Church, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Union for Reform Judaism, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Church Women United and the Episcopal Church.

While the focus of his ministry is on minorities and others who are often jailed instead of offered a chance at recovery, Sanders said he is trying to bring his message to politicians and others who can make a difference.

“I want to raise the consciousness to get mainstream America to appreciate that this (putting addicts in jail) is a bad way to spend our money,” he said.

Addiction specialists say the cost to put a single drug dealer in jail is about $450,000. The cost for arrest and conviction is about $150,000.

The cost for an additional prison bed is about $50,000 to $150,000, depending on the jurisdiction.

It costs about $30,000 per year to house a prisoner, addiction specialists say. With an average sentence of five years, that adds up to another $150,000.

The same $450,000 could provide treatment for about 200 people.

“The fact is, there are effective ways to develop education and prevention models,” Sanders said.