Pubdate: Wed, 12 Feb 2014
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2014 Chicago Tribune Company
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/IuiAC7IZ
Website: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Author: Clarence Page
Page: 23

DON'T OVERREACT TO CELEBRITY DRUG DEATHS

New Reality in Heroin Addiction Calls for Sensible Legal
Answers

As a longtime fan of Philip Seymour Hoffman's work, I view the
widespread reactions of grief over his death with a mixture of
appreciation and dread.

As a fan, I appreciate the recognition that this Oscar-winning actor's
astounding talents richly deserved.

But I also brace myself for the sort of anger-driven, self-defeating,
lock-'em-up anti-drug crusades that too often have followed shocking
drug-related celebrity deaths.

Such high-profile tragedies as the 1970 drug-related deaths of rock
stars Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, for example, helped fuel the
Nixon administration's "war on drugs" and numerous "zero tolerance"
state drug laws that filled prisons with nonviolent offenders serving
long jail sentences.

So did the Reagan-era war against crack cocaine and other drugs in the
1980s after the shocking cocaine overdose of rising basketball star
Len Bias.

Every heroin death is tragic, but Hoffman's death had a bracing
resonance.

He was found dead at age 46 of what appeared to be heroin overdose on
Feb. 2 in his New York City apartment with a syringe in his arm and
packets of drugs nearby.

His narrative upsets the usual heroin-junkie stereotype.

He wasn't broke, dirty, undernourished, homeless or a rock
star.

Instead, his death puts a famous face on a more recent national
calamity: upper-income heroin addicts who started with prescription
painkillers.

As his many obituaries and tributes recount, Hoffman had been clean of
drugs and alcohol for two decades, during which he had a brilliant
career.

Then he started taking prescription pain pills two years ago and
checked into a rehab program last year.

If Hoffman moved from prescription pills to heroin, he was following a
familiar path: an epidemic of OxyContin and other brand-name narcotic
prescription painkillers of the same opiate family as heroin serving
as gateway drugs to heroin.

Four out of 5 new heroin users had previously abused painkillers,
according to the 2012 National Survey on Drug Abuse and Health.

And as the number of heroin users increased in recent years, the
survey found, use of prescription painkillers for nonmedical reasons
declined.

Dr. Sally Satel, a practicing psychiatrist and health policy expert at
the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told me that much of
the recent heroin epidemic can be blamed on simple economics: "Many
users of prescription painkillers find they can get the same effects
from heroin a lot cheaper."

Unfortunately, heroin also is a lot more dangerous.

Lacking the quality control that a pharmaceutical company and
government oversight provide, you don't know what you're getting from
one batch of heroin to the next.

Yet, as Satel noted in a recent article for Bloomberg, many people
switched to heroin because they lost their insurance or they have
turned away from anti-abuse measures, such as the new preparation of
OxyContin that turns into a sticky mush when it is crushed, instead of
a fine powder that can be snorted or injected.

To remedy this new plague, Satel and other experts recommend that more
attention should be paid to treatment programs and doctors who
overprescribe addictive painkillers when less dangerous drugs will do
the job just fine.

We know from experience, at least, that drug addiction needs to be
treated as a medical matter, not just a criminal matter.

Significantly, Hoffman's tragic end comes at a time when states and
the federal government are relaxing their drug laws and turning to
sentencing alternatives to reduce prison populations, save money and
ease the transition of nonviolent inmates back into society.

A third of U.S. states closed prisons over the past three years,
according to a recent report by the Washington-based Sentencing
Project, while almost two-thirds enacted reforms to reduce the number
of incarcerated.

One promising bipartisan Senate proposal, the Smart Sentencing Act, is
backed by Democrats like Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Dick Durbin of
Illinois, and Republicans like Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky.

The bill aims to reduce mandatory minimums for federal drug charges
and give judges more discretion in sentencing.

Hoffman hoped that if he ever died of an overdose, according to his
friend filmmaker Aaron Sorkin, that it would frighten others away from
heroin. I hope it also frightens us toward remedies that make sense
and not just ones that fill prisons.
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