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The Associated Press newswire reports:
After three defendants fatally overdosed in a single week last year, it became clear that Buffalo's ordinary drug treatment court was no match for the heroin and painkiller crisis.
Now the city is experimenting with the nation's first opioid crisis intervention court, which can get users into treatment within hours of their arrest instead of days, requires them to check in with a judge every day for a month instead of once a week, and puts them on strict curfews. Administering justice takes a back seat to the overarching goal of simply keeping defendants alive.
[...] Buffalo-area health officials blamed 300 deaths on opioid overdoses in 2016, up from 127 two years earlier. That includes a young couple who did not make it to their second drug court appearance last spring. The woman's father arrived instead to tell the judge his daughter and her boyfriend had died the night before.
[...] "This 30-day thing is like being beat up and being asked to get in the ring again, and you're required to," 36-year-old Ron Woods said after one of his daily face-to-face meetings with City Court Judge Craig Hannah, who presides over the program.
Woods said his heroin use started with an addiction to painkillers prescribed after cancer treatments that began when he was 21. He was arrested on drug charges in mid-May and agreed to intervention with the dual hope of kicking the opioids that have killed two dozen friends and seeing the felony charges against him reduced or dismissed.
[...] "I don't want to die in the streets, especially with the fentanyl out there," Sammy Delgado, one of the handcuffed defendants, said.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by khallow on Monday July 10 2017, @11:47AM (10 children)
What justice is there to administer? I get that people addicted to opioids are a problem for society. But so is this overbearing system which destroys peoples' lives.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @12:06PM (7 children)
But so
is this overbearing system whichare the pharma companies that destroys peoples' lives.(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 10 2017, @12:26PM (6 children)
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Monday July 10 2017, @03:34PM (5 children)
Elected officials may have passed the laws, but it is the rest of us worker drones who pay the bills of the people who force drug addicted people into court.
Can't large language models be put in charge of resolving ethical issues related to the use of AI?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @05:09PM (4 children)
Do you believe that the vast majority of "us worker drones" would willingly hand over ~>50% of their production if they all weren't being effectively coerced at gunpoint (via the IRS and "law enforcement") to do so?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @05:12PM (3 children)
The communists on this board do believe that. But that's OK, they are too dumb to make US into Venezuela even if they tried - and they will try. The only thing Socialism produces an abundance of is misery.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @06:04PM
As does pure capitalism. Take your pick of economic ass fucking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @06:24PM (1 child)
"The only thing Socialism produces an abundance of is misery."
Which is why socialist democracies are consistently ranked at the top of every "happiness index" chart in existence. You're confusing socialism with (fake) communism.
Socialism is bad, because Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Also, democracy is bad, because Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday July 10 2017, @07:19PM
But Libertariantardism is wounderful, because of the Libertarian Paradisos of Somalia [huffingtonpost.com], and Colorado Springs. [politico.com]
No opiod crisis in either of those places, except for the Colo Springs one.
And remember, folks, "NO ONE EXPECTS the violent imposition!"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Monday July 10 2017, @03:19PM (1 child)
Yeah, but it's not as overbearing as the previous system which punishes people harshly and offers no real treatment.
The big difference I see is the ethnicity of the offenders: when the drugs are largely used by urban blacks, the "justice" system is happy to throw them in the slammer and ruin their lives, and they've been doing this for decades (in fact, MJ was banned specifically because it was popular with black people). But now when it's poor and working-class white people (including a lot of Trump voters) that are overwhelmingly the ones affected by this class of drugs (opioids), suddenly now they want to try a kinder, gentler approach that doesn't completely destroy their lives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @04:36PM
That explains 1/2 the story. The other 1/2 is taking away all their healthcare options. Does it make sense on any level?