Centers that offer services to people experiencing addiction could face more regulation in Georgia, as lawmakers investigate how they operate and whether they are effective enough.
“There are rehab centers all over the state of Georgia that are not meeting the standard that we feel should be there,” state Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, chairman of the Senate Study Committee on Recovery Residences, said Monday during the panel’s first meeting at the state Capitol.
Robertson and a handful of his Senate colleagues from both sides of the aisle concurred that there is work to be done.
They heard from Dr. James Craig, a medical doctor and addiction specialist, during a three-hour meeting that explored the genetic and environmental links to substance abuse.
Craig said society treats addiction like an ethical or moral failing, yet it is a medical condition, marked by physical changes in the brain that stem from exposure to the stress hormone cortisol and other causes beyond a person’s control. A war on drugs would reduce the scope of addiction about as well as a war on candy bar sales would reduce the prevalence of diabetes, he said.
“The vast majority of people that are entering the penal system right now, the vast majority, meet diagnostic criterion for the disease of addiction, which is something that, at least as an addictionologist, I see as a massive human rights violation,” he said. “We’re putting people with a mental illness in a cage.”
Craig said treatment facilities too often return patients to their communities well before they have control over their addiction, whether to alcohol, a drug or something else. It can take a year or more to return the brain’s chemistry to a normal baseline, yet these programs typically last a month, he said.
Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, R-Marietta, said residential treatment facilities are not regulated by the state. That is a concern for the retired orthopedic surgeon.
“The problem right now is we don’t even know where all these things are,” she said. “We don’t even know who’s running them.”
Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain, said the General Assembly has the power to require “fair labeling” of treatment facilities.
“It shouldn’t just be based on Yelp reviews,” said Jackson, the Senate’s minority whip.
Robertson, the Senate’s majority whip, said the General Assembly regulates too much but that this is “life and death” and too many of these facilities “have been run terribly,” so the issue merits a closer look.
Representatives of the facilities were not present to defend themselves, but Robertson said their leaders will be invited to the next hearing, which has not been scheduled. The hearings will eventually include the insurance industry and affected families, he said.
