On Sept. 20, 2007, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) granted $98 million in additional funds to expand a controversial drug rehab-voucher program called Access to Recovery. The program, begun in 2003 with a $600 million budget under the purview of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (itself created by President Bush after his inauguration in 2001), lends indirect government support to religious rehabilitation centers by including them in a taxpayer-funded voucher program for low-income Americans seeking addiction treatment. In doing so, according to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, Access to Recovery represents “a successful embodiment of the President’s goal to enable faith-based and community groups to serve more Americans across the country.”
The money is allotted to states and tribal organizations, which administer the program locally and also decide which centers participate and to whom the vouchers are granted. The prolonged funding of this type of program, which allows faith-based institutions to compete at the same level as secular, research-based ones, represents a continued effort on the part of the Bush administration to provide substantial taxpayer dollars to organizations whose only claim to legitimacy is religious conviction. Because they fall outside the realms of scientifically-evaluated treatments and government health care licensing, such programs present a danger to the health of the participants whom they “treat,” as well as to the fundamental separation between church and state guaranteed by the Constitution.
The argument given by HHS and other supporters of Access to Recovery is that it provides Americans seeking drug treatment with a greater variety of options when choosing how to pursue rehabilitation. But fewer, more qualified choices are better than a multiplicity of programs whose merits have not been fully tested and whose methods fly in the face of nearly a century of accumulated research about how to treat addiction. Many addiction medicine specialists, civil liberties organizations, and drug policy watchdog groups have voiced concern over the effectiveness of the treatments provided by faith-based rehabilitation and the elements of coercion and ideological exclusivity present in their programs. According to critics, faith-based programs’ reliance on the acceptance of God and other religious doctrine serves to downplay the importance of well-researched treatment methods and of overcoming addiction on one’s own. And the focus on religious teachings necessarily excludes, or attempts to convert, segments of the population with different beliefs who may be seeking addiction treatment.
One such program is Teen Challenge, a fundamentalist Christian rehabilitation center with branches across the country and in at least 77 other countries. It touts itself as “the proven cure for the drug epidemic” and specializes in teaching what their Web site calls “New Christians” about conversion to a Christian lifestyle as a method of treatment. The program holds that conversion to fundamentalist Christianity is the best method for curing addiction. Despite its blatant sponsorship of a particular religious creed, the program is supported by the American taxpayer funds put toward vouchers. Participants of all faiths are allowed to enter the program, but the ultimate goal is subscription to a specific set of Christian tenets. In 2001, Rev. John D. Castellani, president of Teen Challenge International U.S.A., testified before a House of Representatives subcommittee that some of the Jews who had completed his program had accepted Jesus as savior and become “completed Jews,” according to the New York Times.
Perhaps more egregious is the government’s continued support of discriminatory hiring practices at many of the faith-based rehabilitation centers. Because the programs teach within a narrow religious framework, they necessarily discriminate against any potential employee with competing religious beliefs. Faith-based initiatives have served to strengthen the government and taxpayer support of such organizations that hire based on religious philosophy alone.
It is commendable that the government has earmarked funding within its anti-drug program for needy Americans seeking addiction treatment, particularly if this option serves as an alternative to criminal sentencing. But the inclusion of non-research-based religious-treatment centers in a taxpayer-funded voucher program reveals another agenda and is plainly unconstitutional. When vouchers are granted to religious groups, it is impossible to create objective criteria upon which to judge the effectiveness of the drug treatment program. And this means that there is no accountability as to how wisely taxpayer money is being spent.
No matter how they’re dressed, drug rehabilitation vouchers represent an effort to indirectly funnel public funds to religious institutions, a direct infringement on the separation of church and state. The intention here is clear—sneak as much federal money as possible into religious groups under the taxpayers’ noses. “We want to fund programs that save Americans, one soul at a time,” President Bush said in a 2004 speech in New Orleans. Using government funds to endorse the saving of souls—from an overwhelmingly Christian perspective, no less—deteriorates civil liberties and violates the First Amendment. In order to guarantee free expression of religion in the United States, it is imperative that religious dogma and taxpayers’ dollars never intersect. Religion may serve as a powerful motivation for overcoming addiction and may be the right choice for some, but it is not a choice that is up to the government to offer.
The author is a Barnard College senior majoring in American studies and a member of the Roosevelt Institution.