Pubdate: Fri, 14 Feb 2014
Source: Oklahoman, The (OK)
Copyright: 2014 The Oklahoma Publishing Co.
Contact: http://www.newsok.com/voices/guidelines
Website: http://newsok.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/318
Author: Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency

MAYBE ACTOR'S DEATH WILL LEAD TO SENSIBLE POLICIES

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 long sentences for 
nonviolent offenders.

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

Hoffman's narrative upsets the usual heroin junky 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 five 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 
finds, use of prescription painkillers for non-medical reasons has 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."

Heroin also is a lot more dangerous. Lacking the quality control that 
a pharmaceutical company and government oversight provides, you don't 
know what you're getting from one batch 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 antiabuse 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. 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 their prison populations, save 
money and ease the transition of nonviolent offenders inmates back 
into society.

One-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 don't just fill prisons.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom