One joy of addiction recovery: exercising the freedom to vote
By Jeremiah Gardner
NOTE: This was originally published for the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation’s monthly Recovery Advocacy Update. If you’d like to receive our advocacy emails, subscribe today.
Another election season has come and gone. As the recovery community and our allies continue to build a constituency of consequence, we hope you got out to vote!
One of the many joys to be discovered in recovery is the freedom to once again be engaged citizens, community members and community leaders. And while views on issues vary within our constituency, many of us have our eyes on issues related to drug policy and health care, among others.
With that in mind, to recap: six states voted on drug policy last week, and the results were split down the middle. Missouri and Maryland joined 19 other states in legalizing cannabis. In Colorado, psychedelic mushrooms were legalized. Meanwhile, legal cannabis failed in South Dakota, North Dakota and Arkansas — marking the end of “a yearslong winning streak” for pot, according to MJBizDaily, a cannabis news outlet.
Legal marijuana wasn’t on the ballot in Minnesota but became more likely due to the election results and the new makeup of the Legislature. However, full legalization and commercialization in Minnesota could be muddied by the state’s experiment approved earlier this year, legalizing synthetic-THC edibles with — as a top government official said — “no licensing, very little stringent testing and high public risk due to lack of compliance & enforcement capacity.”
In related news, Californians voted to allow a law banning flavored tobacco products such as menthol cigarettes and strawberry gummy vaping juice to go into effect — hoping to stop a staggering rise in teen nicotine use.
Meanwhile, on the health care front, South Dakota voters approved an expansion of Medicaid, which will provide more people with health insurance and access to behavioral health care. Here’s a roundup of other state elections as well, and what they mean for health care.
With Republicans appearing to have won the slimmest of majorities in the U.S. House, the GOP is floating that its priorities will include addressing fentanyl’s role in the opioid crisis and reducing health care costs (which, of course, is tricky to do while also expanding access). Moving forward, divided government in Washington will certainly require both parties working together.
With overdose deaths perhaps plateauing but still at record highs, addiction and overdoses remain a top issue facing the nation. About three-quarters of voters in the midterm elections said they were concerned about the use of opioids in their community, including about a third who are “very” concerned, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 94,000 midterm voters nationwide.
There are no quick or easy solutions. That much is clear. Policy environments are shaped over time. And while recovery advocates don’t always agree — who does? — and public policies aren’t the solution to all human challenges, I feel like we continually make progress in shaping a better environment for my 9-year-old twins, one of whom accompanied me to the ballot box last week. He thought the whole idea of voting was pretty cool, and experiencing it through his eyes, so did I. It’s not something I fully appreciated before recovery, and there were plenty of years I never bothered to vote. But freedom from addiction allows us to engage in other freedoms, and to lean into our responsibilities and opportunities. And that’s why holding elections in National Gratitude Month makes so much sense to me!
Jeremiah Gardner is director of communications and public affairs for the nonprofit Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation.
