By Brett Montague

Arresting people for drug use can make them virtually unemployable because of a criminal record. At a time when finding employees is difficult already, a punitive response to drug use is only adding to the challenge.

I’ve seen this play out firsthand. Four years ago, I was working in Human Resources for a manufacturing company east of Hattiesburg. A candidate named Brett aced his interview and asked all the right questions about the job and our company. He really couldn’t have made a better impression on me, and I was ready to hire him. There was just one small hang-up.

On his application, Brett was honest and disclosed that he had just been released from prison after serving a 2.5-year sentence. Six months after falling into a dangerous cycle of addiction, this young man entered our state prison system following an arrest for heroin possession. At the time, he was 23 years old. Taking note of Brett’s disclosure, with the intention of still making an offer of employment, I took the application to my boss for approval. He vetoed my decision, concerned that hiring someone with a felony who had struggled with addiction would set a bad precedent.

I walked away from this conversation asking myself some hard questions. How could Brett’s story be different if he’d gotten help instead of being locked up? Since he was being barred from participating in the legal economy, would he now resort to selling drugs or engaging in some other criminal activity to make ends meet? What price is the broader community paying for locking up our workforce, and how will it affect the next generation of employees? I also felt that my employer lost a real potential asset that day. We failed to see the person. We only saw his past.

Brett had a health crisis and was met with a criminal justice response. Now, instead of helping him, our response to his health crisis is holding him back. He has limited employment opportunities for the rest of his life. He’s missing out, and so are we.

Imagine if we treated everyone in our workforce like this who is struggling with an addiction. Over 2 million Americans suffer from Opioid Use Disorder. According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention ,two-thirds of them are in the workforce. With the employee shortages companies are already struggling with, arresting over 1.3 million American workers would be a disaster.

Adopting health-centered approaches to drugs and addiction over criminal justice ones would also incentivize employees to seek the help they desperately need. This would benefit them as well as their employers by increasing safety and productivity in the workplace.

According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, workers with Substance Use Disorder miss an average of 14.8 days of work per year, and 75% of employers report that opioid use has impacted their workplace. The productivity of our workforce as well as the health and well being of our employees could be greatly improved by treating the health issue of drug use with a health-centered response.

Our national drug epidemic is a huge problem for companies. We can stop criminalizing people for substance use and instead make every effort to keep our employees alive, healthy, and contributing to the economy of our great state.

Brett Montague is the Chief Executive Officer of End It For Good, a Mississippi-based nonprofit that invites people to support approaches to drugs that prioritize life and the opportunity to thrive. He can be reached at brett@enditforgood.com.