CONCORD, N.H.—A New Hampshire teenager said Tuesday he would be in a hospital, jail or dead if not for the addiction rehabilitation services jeopardized by the proposed state budget.
Jesse Welch, 16, of Derry spoke at a news conference protesting deep cuts to substance abuse and treatment programs in the proposed House budget. The state Senate will debate the budget Thursday.
"It was killing me and everyone around me," Welch said of his addiction.
Advocates say alcohol is big business in the state and the prevention and treatment of substance abuse problems should be as well.
At a news conference in the Legislative Office Building Tuesday, those affiliated with an advocacy group called New Futures said the state was not paying back its share of alcohol revenue to those who abuse the product from which the state profits.
The House budget projects that alcohol sales in the next biennium will top $1.2 billion, an increase of $124 million over the previous biennium. That budget also proposes cutting the budget for alcohol and substance abuse treatment and prevention programs from $7.3 million to $3.3 million over the same period, a cut prevention advocates describe as "devastating."
"This budget will eliminate community-based prevention services," said New Futures Executive Director Linda Saunders Paquette.
Welch, sporting a striped rugby shirt and optimism about his future, told the Associated Press he was a chronic runaway who committed robberies and break-ins to feed his addiction to opiates.
He attributes his sobriety to a residential stint at Phoenix House in Dublin, one of the facilities threatened by proposed budget cuts.
It was like rebuilding myself from the inside out," said Welch, as he stood in a corridor of the state Capital with others waiting to deliver poster board-sized placards affixed with postcards to state senators.
Today Welch is living back at home, scoring high 90s on the high school equivalency exams he is taking on line and seeing no barriers to his future.
"I could be in one of these offices," he said, waving an arm toward a wing of elected officials. "My possibilities are limitless."
At the press conference, he said jails and hospitals cost far more than treatment. "I am living proof."
Paquette said there were over 9,000 driving-under-the-influence arrests in the state in 2010 and that one in 10 of New Hampshire residents have a substance abuse problem.
The legislature in 2001 passed legislation requiring that 5 percent of gross alcohol profits in the state be allocated to treatment and prevention services. But the legislature almost immediately suspended the percentage mandate. The proposed budget calls for less than one percent of anticipated alcohol revenues to be allocated to addiction services.
