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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: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday July 12 2017, @10:18PM (2 children)
The pharmaceutical companies and medical industry have been claiming as a fact that these drugs aren't addictive for many, many years. Based not on scientific studies, not on some reasonable theories on how the drugs work, but based on a single letter to the editor in one medical journal. It's hard to blame people for making bad decisions when the "experts" were knowingly feeding them false information. Congratulations on the fact that you chose not to trust your doctor the one time that was actually a good move. But be careful about blaming people too much for trusting expert opinions, because that's also fueling crap like the anti-vaccination trend.
At some point, "I was trusting the medical opinion of the guy with a medical degree rather than some crap I found on the internet" IS actually a good excuse. Unless you plan to roll back the entire concept of specialization/division of labor and all the technological progress that is has brought, we need people to trust the experts, and for that to happen we also need to take care of people who get bad advice. The people we need to punish are the experts who chose to mislead the public.
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/did-letter-help-fuel-opioid-crisis-n767011 [nbcnews.com]
(Score: 1, Troll) by Gaaark on Wednesday July 12 2017, @11:44PM (1 child)
Yes, i do get that.
But, even if you DO become addicted, you have a choice to make: stop being addicted or continue being addicted.
Kicking the addiction IS hard and can be fecking hard, truly truly fecking incredibly hard... continuing to be addicted is easy (or easier?).
You have to want to kick the addiction and until you do, probably not much can be done. Some people basically are saying "It's not their fault": no, it may not be at first. But if it continues for years until they overdose or whatever, then YES it is their fault.
They just didn't want to kick it as much as they wanted to continue feeling the high, or feeling no pain.
Like an alcoholic, nothing can be done until the person themself wants to quit.
And, like a drug addict, the alcoholic makes a choice: kick the addiction or continue with it.
It all comes down to the choice they make: Quit (or seek help to quit) or don't. Choose.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday July 14 2017, @12:44AM
Wow... mod me as Troll all you want: just remember that I'm right.
Addicts DO have a choice: quit (or seek help in quitting) or continue with the pleasure seeking.
Mod me Troll and i will only rise up stronger.
Gaaark The White.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---