What I'm proposing is that an effective drug strategy would involve dealing with prisoners' pain management issues, and not purely physical pain management issues but pain management issues that basically speak to people's experience in some cases before they come into the institutions. Many people, when they start to use drugs, are trying to mask something; they are self-medicating, and there are underlying issues that might need psychiatric support. In many cases people are in that situation both before they come in but also through their experience in the institution.
As to levels of isolation, I've always argued that if people do not have mental health issues when they come into prison, if they're doing a federal sentence they are likely to have mental health issues when they leave.
So a drug strategy should definitely look at people's pain management issues and people's mental health needs in the institution and would include broader options for treatment and programming, many of which, I would argue—and this is partly to get past the issues of trust and fear—should be provided by community organizations that are relocating their services into the institution. Again, that would support the principle of equivalency, in terms of people having comparable services for health available to them in prison to those that exist in the community.
A part of that effective drug strategy would also involve comprehensive harm reduction services available to prisoners, hopefully lowering the risk to prisoners—and eventually to the community as prisoners get out—from there being much higher rates of HIV and HCV among the prison population.