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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: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Monday July 10 2017, @05:53PM (6 children)
As someone that lives with extreme pain every day I am very grateful that I am pretty much allergic to opiods (bad bad side effects). Would you call Woods stupid? Pain management, even under the supervision of a doctor, is just a road of gradually increased opiod usage till you're on drugs. It may take 10 years, it may take 5 years, but eventually the prescriptions are not enough. I've known this since high school which is why I've refused to even try any kind of pain pills since I had bad reactions, and not even morphine. The latter works on me, which is why I leave it to ER situations and only when I can't handle it. Two broken ribs didn't allow me to get morphine. That's how much I fear going down that road.
How many of these people started from the pain management route, and not the stereotypical route of poor judgement and bad character?
Then while sick, how many of these people found the help they needed with family and medical programs designed for rehabilitation and getting you back to work? Ohh, that's right! This is America. Fuck you, you work while you need to get better, and fuck you. Where does that get you? 10 years later while you've eaten through savings and the grace of your family (should you have it), and you find yourself in pain management at the social welfare level. Without that, your stealing to get your pills on the black market.
Seriously. You act as if the deck isn't stacked against these people and they deliberately chose their fate. They didn't, they try to avoid it, but it's very very hard to do when it is under doctor supervision.
Only a portion of the opiod crisis is directly related to Darwinism. The rest is related to our collective Darwinism that will see us extinguished as a species. Good riddance, I say.
Thank God for marijuana, and my easy and free access to it for the last couple of decades. Not everyone does.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Monday July 10 2017, @06:24PM
It's amazing how good a job the government and lobbyists have done to demonize marijuana over the decades. We still have people who firmly say no to legalization and push for even harsher sentencing because of some false sense of morals. Meanwhile the pharmaceutical industry has had no repercussions for selling what amounts to legal heroin which is responsible for the surge in opioid addiction, crime, and deaths. Once the pills became hard to come by, people switched to cheap heroin. Every young kid at my work in their 20's can name one or more people they know who has died from a heroin overdose. Many started using pills in their teens.
For me I use it as a sleep aid to help combat the restlessness of anxiety. I also notice it really helps with food digestion. Foods which have a chance of giving me diarrhea now quietly sit and digest producing solid stool. And you can't beat the 100% all natural solution to the problem requiring minimal processing which amounts to growing, harvesting and drying. It lends itself very well to people who wish to grow their own medicine. Don't want to smoke it? Vape it using any number of electric or even flame based vaporizers. Almost impossible to overdose on unless you ingest pure extract which would be stupid expensive.
My only fear is the inevitable commercialization via the pharmacological industry. They will undoubtedly use every dirty trick in the book to keep it illegal while patenting, trademarking and distilling the plant down to base chemicals they will neatly package and sell as a "safe" alternative to the demonized marijuana at a substantial markup.
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Monday July 10 2017, @08:06PM (4 children)
Quote ediii : Seriously. You act as if the deck isn't stacked against these people and they deliberately chose their fate. They didn't, they try to avoid it, but it's very very hard to do when it is under doctor supervision.
You avoided it even when under a doctor's supervision. I did too. I just refuse to take any of that stuff and have turned in for disposal every prescription pain med prescribed for me after heart surgery - beginning with the second day in icu. Scared to death of them.
The point in time where doctor prescribed opiods were a COMMON problem was 15 years ago. But that's not true any more because PATIENTS as well as doctors understand the risks these days.
The man you refer to (Woods) probably got his original prescription during the tail end of the era of naivete. There had to be a significant amount of self delusion and denial going on in his head as he spent the next 14 years going from some mild hospital prescription to heroin.
Personally I believe there are people who are predisposed to easy addiction. I know too many seriously wounded combat vets in my age group that did not succumb to this trap, and only 3 guys that went off the deep end - all dead now. But I knew those three in high school before military service and they were already into drug experimentation early.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Gaaark on Monday July 10 2017, @09:46PM (3 children)
EXACTLY!!!!!!
Maybe this 'Woods' bugged/nagged his doctor to give him something stronger because he was too pussy to bear the pain (maybe not... Never having had cancer, i'd say maybe Woods might be one of the victims, yes!).
But I've known people who have gone from doctor to doctor getting prescriptions to keep the high, thusly making addicts out of themselves.
Yes some are innocent victims, but some NAG their doctors. Some take more than the doctor ordered. Some are STUPID!
You have one kidney from a donor: do you give it to the alcoholic brain surgeon, or the 11 year old child? Sometimes, you have to make a choice, with limited funds, and let Darwin make that choice for you.
I'd say, if they truly want to drop the addiction and TRULY make an effort, fine. If not, let Darwin choose.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @10:38PM (2 children)
The alcoholic brain surgeon has contacts and can pull strings. Plus, he can pay top dollar. The 11 year old kid is probably from a nobody family with no connections, and probably on medicare/medicaid/disability/charity/whatever else in the patchwork to cover her bills to boot.
Therefore, the alcoholic brain surgeon will get my liver.
Damn... now I'm second guessing checking the donor box on my driver's license renewal a few months ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @10:41PM (1 child)
Oh I guess you were talking about kidneys. Same thing. Usually it's livers when we're talking about alcoholism. I didn't expect kidneys!
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday July 11 2017, @01:46AM
Yeah, my bad.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---