On a recent Thursday at the Indiana County Court House, District Attorney Patrick Dougherty gathered in a courtroom with fellow members of the county's drug treatment court team and discussed the week's progress of several offenders in the program. There was no talk of fines and sentence lengths, just words of encouragement, even if tough. One man was having difficulty holding a job, so to keep moving in the right direction, it was recommended that he bring five copies of completed job applications with him to his weekly court sessions. [continues 1732 words]
Illegal drugs have become a deadly merry-go-round in West Virginia. Just when the authorities believe they are making a dent in one form of abuse, another one comes around to take its place. Sometimes the cycle repeats itself. Police and prosecutors seem to be having some success in cracking down on methamphetamine labs, synthetic drugs and prescription pill abuse. But some say that has resulted in more trafficking in heroin. Price seems to be a factor. In part because arrests of prescription painkiller pushers have made the law of supply and demand kick in, the pills have become more expensive in some places. Heroin actually is cheaper. [continues 311 words]
Program lauded for saving tax dollars THE future of Winnipeg's drug treatment court is in jeopardy due to a lack of stable funding and friction over which level of government should control the long-running program, the Free Press has learned. As of May 1, the drug court stopped accepting new applications from offenders because there's no guarantee its annual funding will be there as of April 1, 2015, justice sources confirmed Monday. The federal government is tired of funding the drug court without a commitment by the Manitoba government to take it over in the long term, sources said. [continues 711 words]
Former independent senator Dana Seetahal had advocated for a drug court to be established in this country. Seetahal served as an independent senator from 2002 to 2010. In 2007, she contributed to the debate on a private motion moved by former independent senator Ramesh Deosaran which focused on the then People's National Movement (PNM) Government handling of the crime situation. She had expressed concern about the drug trade and the increased addiction to cocaine and heroin. "So you know when I hear this acknowledgement of this and we have all this crime, look at what is happening in the world and so on; yes, yes, but what are we doing here? Why is there no drug court? When I say drug court, I am not talking about a court called, "Drug and firearms court" where you try people charged with drug offences," Seetahal had said. [continues 190 words]
Three prominent staff members of the Cape's largest substance abuse treatment organization have signed on to work for different medical marijuana clinics. Ray Tamasi, president and CEO of Gosnold on Cape Cod, has accepted the job as addiction prevention director for Medical Marijuana of Massachusetts, which received provisional licenses to open three dispensaries - one in Mashpee, Taunton and Plymouth. Tamasi said he plans to donate his projected salary of $100,000 to his treatment organization's prevention program. Shelley Stormo, Gosnold's director of family services, will be the CEO and president of Compassionate Care Clinics, which has a provisional license to open in Fairhaven. Her projected salary is $150,000, she said. [continues 1091 words]
Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. sees a big problem with opiates and crime across the county. "The problem is huge. It's really taxing resources," he said. "We have a lot of cases where we see people who have graduated from prescription drugs of their own to buying prescription medicine on the streets, to stealing out of medicine cabinets, leading to a problem where they no longer can fund their addiction. "An OxyContin pill is $1 a milligram. A 50-milligram pill is $50. They know they can't come up with enough money to feed the addiction. [continues 764 words]
Deters made that announcement in front of a town hall-style heroin summit called by DeWine as the number of heroin deaths seemed to be spiraling out of control. It was the 12th in a series of community forums DeWine is holding across the state to come up with a plan of attack for the growing heroin epidemic. "I think it would be a very good deterrent in our community," Deters said of a proposal that would make it easier to hold dealers accountable for fatal overdoses. [continues 482 words]
SHARONVILLE - Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters revealed Wednesday that he and Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine are working together on a bill that would allow murder charges to be brought against drug dealers who sold lethal doses of heroin. Deters made the announcement in front of a town hall-style heroin summit called by DeWine. It was the 12th in a series of community forums DeWine is holding across the state to come up with a plan of attack for the growing heroin epidemic. [continues 278 words]
State legislators on Monday weighed options for combating a statewide surge of heroin and prescription painkiller addiction, but arrived at no concrete solutions for a crisis that claimed at least 800 lives in New Jersey last year. The Senate Health, Human Services, and Senior Services Committee discussed a task force report on heroin and opiates, released last month by the Governor's Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, and heard testimony from the council's acting executive director, Celina Gray. Committee members expressed alarm about the breadth of the state's opiate addiction problem, but also asked pointed questions of Gray about the Christie administration's financial commitment to the task force's recommendations, the efficacy of current recovery and prevention programs, and the task force's apparent focus on suburban addiction to the exclusion of urban areas long blighted by drugs and drug-related violence. [continues 984 words]
Lawmakers Question Christie's Drug Abuse Aide TRENTON - The Governor's Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse spent two years gathering and analyzing data, taking heart-wrenching testimony from families who lost loved ones to drug abuse and writing a hefty report on New Jersey's heroin crisis. And now comes the hard part: Taking the recommendations of the 88-page report and putting them into action in a state low on cash and resistant to increasing treatment outside the cities to the suburbs. [continues 425 words]
Simple Answer: Amid controversy, sometimes the basic facts of drug addiction get lost. The nation is watching Tennessee for new legislation that would allow women to be criminally charged if they use drugs during pregnancy that harm their newborns. State and national groups have asked Gov. Bill Haslam to veto the bill before Tuesday, saying criminalization isn't the right approach to stem the state's growing numbers of babies born dependent on drugs. This complicated epidemic raises many questions, yielding few simple answers. Here are a few: [continues 596 words]
The latest figures on heroin overdoses confirm the breadth of Ohio's opioid epidemic and the need for more treatment Newly released figures from the Ohio Department of Health show a spike in fatal heroin overdoses. That should push policymakers and politicians to expand the state's inadequate treatment network, which now serves only about one in 10 of those who need help. Heroin overdose deaths in Ohio rose nearly 60 percent in 2012, while the number of deaths from prescription pills dropped for the first time in more than a decade. Ohio's 680 heroin-related deaths in 2012, reported last week, represent the latest official count. [continues 541 words]
When a trio of local legal experts a retired judge, a former federal prosecutor and a longtime local attorney examined the criminal justice system, they identified Spokane County's Drug Court as a "pocket of excellence." The court, which puts drug-addicted criminal offenders through a yearlong march of treatment and intensive oversight in exchange for a dismissal of their charges, drives down the recidivism rate and saves money and should be expanded, the Spokane Regional Criminal Justice Commission concluded. Jamie Hummell also has a high opinion of the court, but for more personal reasons. [continues 948 words]
First in a two-part series. So many heroin abusers hop onto the No. 560 SMART bus to Detroit to buy drugs it's been dubbed "the heroin express." "It's called the heroin express. There's not much we can do about it," said Roseville Police Chief James Berlin, whose city includes multiple popular Gratiot Avenue stops, after attempts to crack down on the practice. "Yeah, the 560," sheriff's Lt. David Daniels, head of his department's drug unit, repeated in a tone of familiarity. "We've had them on that bus from Macomb Township and Chesterfield Township." [continues 3445 words]
If legalized, 32,000 of Arizona's high-school students who have never used marijuana would be more likely to try it; 76,000 high-school kids who have tried it would be more likely to use it again. Legalization means a commercialized industry that knowingly promotes a drug for profit, and a culture that celebrates inebriation over sobriety. Marijuana is a mind-altering substance, more potent today than ever. It substitutes a drug-induced euphoria for the brain's natural reward system, sucking ambition and jeopardizing school performance. [continues 164 words]
Factual data, as opposed to anecdotal reports, tend to paint a more accurate depiction of a situation. It's unfortunate that media stories about decriminalizing marijuana tend to lack the former ("Assembly moves to decriminalize marijuana," April 5). I've been following this story for the past few months and have yet to see any data to support the premise that prisons are bursting with low-level drug offenders and cost taxpayers millions by relegating countless harmless, well-meaning marijuana users to a life of unemployment. [continues 146 words]
State Rep. Paul Curtman's attempt to get an additional $7 million added to the state's drug court program was unsuccessful in the Missouri House, but he plans to keep up the effort. The Missouri House passed its version of the budget without the additional funding that Curtman proposed. Now the budget has gone to the Senate, where Curtman hopes he can work with senators to put more funding into the system. State Rep. Dave Schatz, R-Sullivan, plans to help Curtman work with the Senate to get additional drug court funding added to the budget. However, they may not be able to get the full $7 million, but any increase will be better than nothing, Curtman, R-Pacific, said. [continues 226 words]
'Samaritan' Laws Join Changes on Pot, Prison Someone was with Salvatore Marchese when he died of a heroin overdose, but no one called 911. So his mother, Patty DiRenzo, a legal aide, began a quest to help make sure that others wouldn't be afraid to make that call. She created a Facebook page, wrote New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie nearly every day and called all 120 members of the state legislature. The grieving mother accomplished what would have been inconceivable a few short years ago, much less back when the nation launched its war on drugs: She helped pass a bill, signed by a Republican governor, that lets people get away with using drugs for the sake of saving lives. [continues 1662 words]
Marijuana is still not legal in Ohio, but state law enforcement officials worry driving while stoned is destroying nationwide efforts to reduce fatal car crashes. Deadly collisions involving marijuana use have tripled in the last 10 years, according to a recent study from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. The study was published Jan. 29 in the American Journal of Epidemiology. The analysis showed 28 percent of driver fatalities and more than 11 percent of the general driver population tested positive for non-alcohol drugs, with marijuana being the most commonly detected substance. [continues 782 words]
The reality of the number of people tied to heroin trafficking - and, more generally, the drug trade - led the criminal justice system to shift its emphasis away from users. "We're not fighting a war on drugs. That was lost years ago," said Ben David, New Hanover County's district attorney. "We're fighting a war against drug dealers." As part of that effort, the district attorney's offices in Brunswick and New Hanover counties are willing to try cases in federal court, where there are stiff penalties and no probation, and to try dealers for trafficking, which, depending on the amount of drugs seized, carries minimum sentences of from five years and 10 months to 23 years and six months on a state level. Often, prosecutors see an overlap between gang activity and the heroin trade. "It's a bad guy drug, and it is something that a lot of the rich kids crave," David said. "It's that rare intersection of high demand with a ready supply. ... It's mixing people with money with people who are desperately poor, and that often leads to other crimes of violence like armed robberies, home invasions and sometimes murder." [continues 809 words]
