COMPASSION MATTERS –
Nov. 6, 2025 – State Sen. Jesse James, R-Thorp, will celebrate 28 years of sobriety from drug and alcohol use next month. He’s deeply proud of the milestone and said his own life informs how he approaches topics of addiction and mental health in his work as a state lawmaker and his career as a police officer for the Chippewa County village of Cadott. “I’ve been to jail, and I had to make decisions to turn my life around myself,” James told the Cap Times. “There’s times where I was seeking sobriety and I failed, and I can only imagine trying to seek sobriety in a jail or prison environment and how difficult that can be.”
People coming out of jails and prisons already face increased risk of drug overdose within the first two weeks after their release, according to a study from the American Journal of Public Health.
Nationally, data shows that more than 60% of people in jail and more than 50% of the people in state prisons meet the diagnostic criteria for substance use disorder. That’s compared with 5% of the general public, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics in the federal Department of Justice.
