As I pull into the child welfare office parking lot, my minivan crunches over worn-out gravel. Hopping out, I unbuckle the infant car seat that holds our newborn foster son. As I turn toward the office, I see a woman sprinting toward me. The first thing I notice are tears streaming down her face. As she reaches us, she leans down and covers the baby with kisses.

This is my first time meeting Joanne, the mother of my foster son, and I have no idea what to do. Whole-hearted affection and emotion are not what I expected. Isn’t this the woman who used drugs while she was pregnant? If she loves her son this much, why didn’t she stop using?

I didn’t know much about addiction when I met Joanne. I grew up in a conservative Christian home in Jackson, Mississippi, and never had any interest in using drugs. The dominant cultural narrative I picked up was that bad people use drugs, and that really bad people become addicted to them.

A pregnant mother using drugs was even worse.

But as my relationship with Joanne grew, it became so clear that her love for her son was just as fierce as my love for my own sons. As much as it challenged everything I thought I knew about people struggling with addiction, I couldn’t unsee the truth. She was a mom like me.

Prisons don't heal drug addiction

It was the beginning of a transformative learning journey as I began to rethink everything I thought I knew about drugs, addiction and how to reduce harm effectively.

Mississippi, where I still live, has the highest imprisonment rate in the United States. In 2021 alone, more than half the people sent to prison on a drug charge were sentenced for drug possession – not selling or trafficking. In just one state in one year, we sent nearly 1,500 people to prison for possession.

They were, on average, 36 years old and would stay there for nearly six years.

As I started to connect statistics with the faces they represent, I wondered how Joanne’s story would’ve ended if she had been sent to prison like so many people just like her. What would have happened to her son if his mother had disappeared for half of his childhood?

It was deeply uncomfortable to consider whether the criminal justice approach to drug use that I had always supported might actually make it harder for families to be healthy and whole.

I'm a foster kid with a degree.That shouldn't be rare, but it is. We can change that.

Addicts need help, not handcuffs

As I read research about addiction and the best ways to reduce harm, it became clear that incarceration would not solve Joanne’s addiction. For one, drugs are readily available in jails and prisons. But more important, addiction is a complex health crisis often made worse by trauma. Joanne needed help, not handcuffs.

While she was able to enter inpatient addiction treatment that helped her heal from trauma, so many others are sent into a prison system that produces trauma. It’s like pouring gasoline on a fire.

Alabama execution was torture:I witnessed Alabama execute a man using nitrogen gas. It was horrific and cruel.

Research convinced me that a health-centered approach to addiction is far more effective than a criminal justice one. It benefits all of us, by helping people address the reasons they use drugs instead of just punishing them for using.

If we want better outcomes, we must address the problem's root cause.

Joanne helped me see her as an equal instead of an “other.” Even though she struggled with addiction for almost two decades, she has been sober for eight years now, since that tiny baby brought us together in the parking lot. She is an amazing mother, friend and case manager for a local drug court.

A health-centered approach to drug use won’t always end this way, but we know how it would have ended if Joanne sat in prison while her son grew up without her.

A criminal justice approach to drug use helps very few people and harms many. A health-centered approach at least meets the root cause of the problem with the best tools to solve it. There are no perfect solutions, but that should never stop us from pursuing better ones.

Christina Dent is the founder and president of End It For Good and author of a new book, "Curious: A Foster Mom’s Discovery of an Unexpected Solution to Drugs and Addiction."