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Governor Christie speaks to a group teen boys at Newark Renaissance House last week. Renaissance House serves individuals, families and the community through programs that treat the disease of addiction and the behavioral, mental health and lifestyle issues associated with this disease.

(Andre Malok | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

To combat New Jersey’s growing heroin and opioid crisis, Gov. Chris Christie says the state needs to embrace a dramatically different approach to substance abuse, but cautioned that he will not write a blank check to get it there.

In his time as governor, heroin and opioid abuse have surged into the spotlight, claiming at least 740 lives in New Jersey alone last year, while tens of thousands of others sought treatment, many of their lives broken by addiction. Irrespective of how the state arrived at such an unenviable position, in Christie’s eyes, government has a role in making sure those shackled by addiction get the help they need.

In an interview with NJ Advance Media, Christie said that means changing course, to a system that values treatment over incarceration. The War on Drugs has failed, he says, and it’s time to move on.

“I think what we’ve seen over the last 30 years is it just hasn’t worked,” he said. “And there are some people who make one bad choice to try drugs one time and their particular chemistry leads them to be an addict from the minute they try it. So we need to treat it as a disease. And not having mandatory incarceration for non-violent offenders but having mandatory treatment is something that’s going to yield a much greater result for society in general and for those individuals in particular.“

According to federal data, treatment centers in the Garden State have been operating near or slightly above capacity for several years. While the number of available treatment slots has increased over the last decade, so has demand, one that is increasingly being driven by heroin and prescription opioids.

In 2010, the state estimated 37 percent of people seeking substance abuse treatment in New Jersey didn’t receive it. Since then, the number of heroin-related deaths has increased by 160 percent, while the number of people in treatment for heroin or opioids has only increased by 15 percent.

To that effect, Christie says New Jersey is falling short. There aren’t enough available residential treatment beds for adults battling substance abuse. Getting into what does exist can be a confounding maze of dead-ends and frustrating questions. If you do find a bed, odds are your insurance carrier won’t pay.

Christie says the state needs to step up to fix this, but just as importantly, the private sector does as well.

“I don’t want to build a bunch of new state facilities. I don’t think that’s the right thing to do from a fiscal perspective or for the long-term treatment of these folks,” he said. “We’ve got to be able to have local government agencies, the counties in particular do a better job…to say, ‘here’s where you go, here’s the options for detox that are available, here is non-residential that’s available, here’s residential that’s available,’ and help them connect those dots. I think we need to do a better job at that.”

A LONG HISTORY

When he talks about his connection to heroin and opioid addiction, Christie’s head bows and his voice softens.

Earlier this year, a longtime friend who had struggled with addiction for years died from an overdose. Christie watched his decline, even participating in an intervention several years ago, before he was ultimately found alone in a West Orange hotel room surrounded by empty bottles of prescription opioids and alcohol.

“Married, children, incredibly successful, wonderful guy, great friend. And um, I saw how hard it was to deal with this issue,” Christie said, in an exclusive interview with NJ Advance Media. “So when you have these kind of experiences you realize it can happen to anybody. This is an Ivy League trained, brilliant lawyer, who just could not deal with his disease and ultimately succumbed to it. ... It strikes you that you want to kind of do what you can when you have a position like mine to make sure that happens as little as possible.”

Substance abuse treatment is not a new issue for Christie.

He began working with Daytop Village, a substance abuse treatment center for adolescents, in Mendham as a Morris County freeholder in 1995. He was appointed to the Human Services Committee because “I was the youngest one there and nobody wanted it.”

“When I saw those kids, I realized they could be my kids, they could be any kids. I was 32 years old at the time and had one child who was not quite a year old, so it was very acute to me,” he said. “I was just starting to be a father and I thought ‘Jesus, it could be my kid, we need to do something.’”

While Christie is a politician through-and-through with eyes on a potential presidential run in 2016, political observers say his views on substance abuse appear personally, not politically, motivated.

“On many other issues, you can look at decision making and say he has made the politically expedient choice,” said Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University. “That doesn’t appear to be the case here. It’s an issue that he really hasn’t kowtowed to the conservatives on, which he easily could.”

Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said even if his views were politically motivated, there wouldn’t be much benefit.

“There’s no question that it softens his image a little bit, which is good in a general election, but it doesn’t get people to your side,” Murray said. “It doesn’t have a lot of political benefits to it.”

NEXT STEPS

Since taking office, Christie has led the charge to expand drug court, a measure that mandates treatment for non-violent drug offenders in lieu of incarceration. He enacted legislation to expand the use of Narcan, an opioid overdose antidote, a measure that has already saved the lives of hundreds statewide in its first year of broad use by emergency-responders.

“I think all of those things are things that a governor can and should do on issues you feel really strongly about and there are very few issues that I feel as strongly about or more strongly about than this one,” he said.

He also said he was confident he would be able to come to an agreement on a sprawling package of legislation being pushed through the state legislature by Sen. Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex) specifically targeting prevention, treatment and education efforts amid the heroin crisis.

“There are aspects of the approach he wants to take that I may have some quarrel with but that’s kind of always the way that it works,” he said, declining to address specific legislation because it has yet to arrive at his desk. “When push comes to shove and we’ve got to sit down and produce a final product, I’m sure it’ll end up like it normally does. Joe and I will be sitting in a room hashing out the details … I think we’ll be able to work together and get something resolved.”

Looking ahead, Christie said he hopes to push insurance carriers to pay more for substance abuse treatment in New Jersey and wants to improve the tracking of statistics on treatment and drug-induced deaths to better understand the nature of the problem. He also committed to fiscally support new treatment beds in New Jersey once constructed, which he said would yield long-range financial savings.

“One year residential treatment is generally about half of what it costs to incarcerate someone. So, in the short term it helps. But the bigger cost-savings is in the long term. Because when you turn someone who is dependent on the state, not contributing at all to the tax base into someone who’s clean, sober, employed and paying taxes – that’s a geometric effect.”

But while many in the treatment community praise Christie’s approach, they say the funding to build treatment facilities just isn’t there.

“Bricks and mortar money has been very stingy over the last year … There was a time I could turn to the state and get help, but that’s not the case right now,” said Alan Oberman, CEO of the John Brooks Recovery Center in Atlantic City. “Christie has probably been the most-pro treatment governor in quite a while. But while I think the conversation around addiction has changed, we haven’t seen the money yet."

And Christie says he doesn’t intend for it to come from the state either.

“I’m confident the private sector will fill that void, because there’s money to be made on this treatment as well,” he said. “Because as the state makes treatment mandatory (through drug court) and as it continues to provide funding for it, there will be people who can build facilities. I think funding some of this care, requiring that insurance companies fund some of this care and then lastly trying to make sure we help people connect the dots and get into treatment — we can do better at that.”

But Christie said changing the conversation on addiction is perhaps the most important thing he can do. The stigma of addiction, he said, of shunning or jailing the afflicted needs to end.

"People have to see hope at the end of treatment. If they believe that their life won't be any different if they're clean because people think, well if you've been drug addicted then you can't hold a responsible job, well then it makes it a lot harder to go through treatment," he said. "On the front end it's important because so many people hide their addiction. They're ashamed of it, they don't want anyone to know so they don't get help. They just dig a deeper and deeper hole. So de-stigmatizing helps on both the front end and the back end."



Stephen Stirling may be reached at sstirling@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @sstirling. Find him on Facebook.