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September 5, 2017
A deep look at "tough on crime" responses to the opioid epidemic
German Lopez has this lengthy important new Vox piece under the headlined "The new war on drugs: Not every state is responding to the opioid epidemic with just public health policies." I recommend the piece in full, and this excerpt highlights its themes:
There has been much discussion of criminal justice reform in the past several years. And there has been a lot of talk about treating the opioid epidemic — the deadliest overdose crisis in US history — as a public health, not criminal justice, issue, unlike past drug crises. The cliché about the crisis, said by both Democrats and Republicans, is that “we can’t arrest our way out of the problem.”
Yet the rhetoric doesn’t tell the whole story. In my own investigation, I found at least 13 states, including Kentucky, that passed laws in recent years that stiffened penalties for opioids painkillers, heroin, or fentanyl — largely in response to the epidemic. In sharp contrast to all the talk about criminal justice reform and public health, these laws risk sending even low-level, nonviolent drug offenders — many of whom are addicted to drugs and need help for that addiction — to prison for years or decades.
The facts show that the conventional narrative about the opioid epidemic and criminal justice reform is incomplete. Most states — including many of the states I found that passed new “tough on crime” laws in response to the opioid epidemic — have passed criminal justice reform at some level in the past several years. And the rhetoric about drugs has undeniably changed a lot in recent years across both political parties.
But as the opioid epidemic continues to kill tens of thousands of people in the US each year, many state lawmakers have gone back to the old criminal justice playbook to fight the crisis — even as the empirical evidence remains clear that tougher prison sentences are not an effective means to stopping the epidemic. The new laws are just one example. Several states have also dusted off old laws to lock up more opioid users and dealers.
And that shows that for all the talk about reform, America’s instincts for the “tough on crime” approach are still very much here.
September 5, 2017 at 05:37 PM | Permalink
Comments
A brief review of the role of punishment in the prevention of addiction and of its lethal consequences.
Punishment is a major factor in the treatment of addiction. Addiction is defined by continued use, in the face of punishment (loss of freedom, health, family, money). Therefore a greater dose of punishment is needed to help addicts.
1) People with something to lose have a higher chance of recovery, doctors, admirals, CEO's vs janitors, convicted felons, prostitutes;
2) the punishment of alcohol use and the forbearance of opiate use in Vietnam resulted in the 15% addiction rate to opiate among soldiers, and less alcohol use. Upon return to the US, with no punishment of alcohol use, and punishment of opiate use, the rate of opiate addiction in the returning vets dropped to the expected 1%. The remaining US addicts had features similar to the addict population of the US, and were more deviant than the addicts who stopped;
3) Prohibition of alcohol dropped alcohol use only 50%, its having no popular support. Yet, the benefits were great if under reported, drops in crime (except, of course, for bootlegging), drops in crashes, economic boom times, drops in the rates of death from cirrhosis, which is a reliable indicator of the rates of alcoholism (only 10% of alcoholics die of it, but it is a statistical indicator);
4) severe punishments end all addiction, in Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the old Communist China. Zero addiction. These have extreme cost benefit ratios. Yes, shoot an addict, but save the lives of a hundred who do not become addicted;
5) the threat of punishment after death also is effective, from religion. Drink, go to hell, if Muslim, Mormon, Methodist. Low rates of alcoholism, and the prevention of all its consequences.
So harsh sentencing is effective, contrary to the false propaganda of the lawyer. I am going to translate here, "evidence based." That means rent seeking, make work jobs for registered members of the Democratic Party. "Evidence based" is a form of quackery.
Here is a brief review of why evidence based is a euphemism for quackery. You will need to have attended high school statistics class for the first day only, when they discuss coin tossing. No one in our failed medical elite has done so.
http://davidbeharmdejd.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-serious-and-insurmountable-problems.html
Posted by: David Behar | Sep 5, 2017 9:43:04 PM
