Sessions' correspondence to marijuana states is full of smoke and mirror While certain federal administration officials take to Twitter to air their grievances, those stuck in last century use more traditional means for their loosely-supported rants. Attorney General Jeff Sessions sent letters to governors of states with legal recreational marijuana in response to an April 3 letter from the governors of Alaska, Washington and Oregon urging him to uphold Obama-era pot policy. However, the points raised in Sessions' letter may not be as watertight as he thinks. [continues 502 words]
"Federal drug prosecutions have gone down in recent years. We're going to be bringing them up and bringing them up rapidly. At the end of 2016, there were 23 percent fewer than in 2011. So they looked at this scourge and they let it go by, and we're not letting it go by." President Trump -- who two days after this briefing said he would declare the opioid epidemic to be a national emergency -- not so subtly tried to pin the blame on the Obama administration. "They looked at this scourge and they let it go by," the president said, citing statistics that federal drug prosecutions have declined 23 percent since 2011. [continues 654 words]
I grew up in the 1980s, back when the "Just Say No" campaign was in full swing. I remember being prepared to fend off relentless peer pressure to do drugs, evil strangers offering what was not actually candy, and so forth. Then I grew up, and almost none of the scenarios I'd been taught in D.A.R.E. ever really came to pass. I still avoided drugs, mostly because of a combination of a good home life and an over-analytical brain. It wasn't as if drugs weren't around, though. I watched too many of my friends experiment with everything from speed to acid. No one ever pressured me to try it. It was simply there if you wanted to dive in. [continues 601 words]
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump met with Cabinet members and senior staff at his golf club in Bedminster to discuss the opioid crisis. Missing at the meeting was Gov. Chris Christie, the chairman of the president's commission charged with studying the national rise of heroin and opioid addiction. Christie is on vacation. While the governor missed the meeting, the president is missing the message Christie has been sending for several years: treatment over incarceration will save lives. Long before his approval rating tanked at 15 percent, Christie used his then sizable political capital to focus on treatment and rehabilitation. He did it when he pushed for drug courts. He did it when he eloquently spoke of a law student friend who died because of addiction. And during his presidential bid, Christie resonated most effectively with voters when talking about drug addiction. [continues 473 words]
Hydroponic Tomato Garden Inspired Police To Raid Family's Home WASHINGTON - The police report would claim it all kicked off at 7:38 a.m., but Bob Harte later thought it had to be earlier. His 7:20 a.m. alarm had just yanked him awake. Got to get the kids - a boy in seventh grade, a girl in kindergarten - ready for school. Then he heard, like a starter's pistol setting everything into motion, the first pounding on the front door of his home in Leawood, Kansas, a bedroom suburb south of Kansas City. It was thunderous. It didn't stop. Should I get up? Bob thought. Should I not? Sounded like the house was coming down, he would recall later. [continues 1762 words]
A critical way of ensuring crime doesn't pay is for law enforcement to seize the proceeds of drug deals or other illegal activity. This process, called asset forfeiture, is a valued part of a comprehensive criminal-justice program, but proper oversight is needed to prevent abuse. Last week Attorney General Jeff Sessions restarted the longstanding practice, suspended by the Obama administration in 2015, of allowing state authorities to use federal forfeiture procedures. Mr. Sessions also introduced important safeguards to protect innocent people. [continues 439 words]
A Texas girl whose family moved to Colorado to use medical marijuana to treat her intractable epilepsy is among those suing Attorney General Jeff Sessions over the federal cannabis prohibition. Attorney General Jeff Sessions says the federal government should be able to prosecute marijuana use and distribution in states that have declared it legal. An 11-year-old Texas cannabis "refugee" has joined a retired NFL football player, an Iraq War veteran and two others in a lawsuit challenging beleaguered Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the federal government's stance on medical marijuana. [continues 795 words]
People need skills for coping, not more cannabis boutiques I see the provincial premiers are demanding "clarity" - possibly a delay - in the federal plan to legalize marijuana by next July. A communique from their Edmonton conference said they still have concerns about, among other things, traffic safety and public education campaigns. I'm with them. I still don't have "clarity" about legal pot or in fact the use and abuse of recreational drugs in general. Here is what we all bring to any debate about recreational drugs: our own history, our generational lens, our hypocrisy too. [continues 832 words]
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay - The rules are a bit of a buzzkill. Drug users must officially register with the government. Machines will scan buyers' fingerprints at every purchase, and there are strict quotas to prevent overindulgence. But when Uruguay's marijuana legalization law takes full effect on Wednesday, getting high will take a simple visit to the pharmacy. As American states legalize marijuana and governments in the hemisphere rethink the fight against drugs, Uruguay is taking a significant step further: It is the first nation in the world to fully legalize the production and sale of marijuana for recreational use. [continues 1284 words]
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has compared cannabis to heroin. NEW YORK - In a national vote widely viewed as a victory for conservatives, last year's elections also yielded a win for liberals in eight states that legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use. But the growing industry is facing a federal crackdown under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has compared cannabis to heroin. A task force Sessions appointed to, in part, review links between violent crimes and marijuana is scheduled to release its findings by the end of the month. But he has already asked Senate leaders to roll back rules that block the Justice Department from bypassing state laws to enforce a federal ban on medical marijuana. [continues 650 words]
On a cool, rainy day, more than 200 people crowd under a tarp in the parking lot of Big Mama's Restaurant, bidding on bicycles, air rifles and marijuana posters to raise money to support a jailed local legend. They have a lot of work to do, because Cornbread Mafia leader Johnny Boone, captured in Canada and returned to Kentucky after eight years as a fugitive, faces life in prison if convicted on his third strike, for growing 2,421 marijuana seedlings on a farm. In 29 states and the District of Columbia, marijuana is legal for recreational or medicinal purposes, or both. But the federal government, while giving a virtual free pass to growers in states where marijuana is legal, continues to seek long mandatory minimum penalties against defendants in Kentucky and other states where it is not. [continues 1276 words]
Strong motivation to seek and continue treatment makes a difference In "Stop calling addiction a brain disease" (Ideas, June 25), Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld write of how Michael Botticelli, the drug czar under President Obama, "drew an analogy between having cancer and being addicted. 'We don't expect people with cancer to stop having cancer,' he said." Comparing addiction to progressive brain cancer is misleading. Better to compare it to diabetes. Diabetics cannot choose to lower their blood sugar. Diabetics do have a choice, however - to enter treatment and take their medications and modify their diets. Addicts have a similar choice. They can enter and remain in treatment programs. But a strong motivation is necessary. Such motivation results from the realization that an essential component of their life is at risk. [continues 155 words]
Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld do an excellent job, in "Stop calling addiction a brain disease," explaining how a unidimentional brain disease model, rather than a biopsychosocial model of addiction, birthed the opioid epidemic. The 21st century is not the first time medicine considered addiction a brain disease. In 1889 Massachusetts built the Massachusetts Hospital for Dipsomaniacs and Inebriates in Foxborough, thinking overuse of alcohol could be cured in the same fashion as insanity was being cured at the time. [continues 116 words]
One of the nation's leading marijuana legalization groups says PNC Bank has notified it that it will close the organization's 22-year-old accounts, a sign of growing concerns in the financial industry that the Trump administration will crack down on the marijuana industry in states that have legalized it. The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) lobbies to eliminate punishments for marijuana use but is not involved in growing or distributing the drug – an important distinction for federally regulated banks and other institutions that do business with such advocacy groups. [continues 959 words]
WASHINGTON - The Republican drive to roll back Barack Obama's health care law is on a collision course with a national opioid epidemic that's not letting up. Medicaid cuts resulting from the GOP legislation would hit hard in states deeply affected by the addiction crisis and struggling to turn the corner, according to state data and concerned lawmakers in both parties. The House health care bill would phase out expanded Medicaid, which allows states to provide federally backed insurance to low-income adults previously not eligible. Many people in that demographic are in their 20s and 30s and dealing with opioid addiction. Dollars from Washington have allowed states to boost their response to the crisis, paying for medication, counseling, therapy and other services. [continues 820 words]
Despite the upheaval of the current presidential administration, some things just haven't changed, like acting DEA Chief Chuck Rosenberg's Obama-era insistence last month that "marijuana is not medicine." Though he also stated that he'd "be the last person to stand in the way" if medical uses of marijuana rise through the FDA process. (Here's where we count on Sue Sisley's research in Phoenix.) But Rosenberg doesn't seem to pay attention to what happens in Phoenix. If he did, he might hear about a small clinic using marijuana to treat opioid addiction. [continues 582 words]
As he prepares to run for a third term, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, ever the devotee of low-road, right-wing politicking, is hoping the Trump administration will allow his state to be the first in the nation to mandate the drug screening of childless individuals who apply for Medicaid help. "It borders on immoral," Lena Taylor, a Democratic state senator, warned, accusing Mr. Walker of indulging in a "meaningless contest to see how cruel and discriminatory we can be to the poor." [continues 300 words]
When it comes to criminal justice, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a man out of time - stuck defiantly in the 1980s, when crime in America was high and politicians scrambled to out-tough one another by passing breathtakingly severe sentencing laws. This mind-set was bad enough when Mr. Sessions was a senator from Alabama working to thwart sentencing reforms in Congress. Now that he is the nation's top law enforcement officer, he's trying to drag the country backward with him, even as most states are moving toward more enlightened policies. [continues 426 words]
WASHINGTON - As a senator, Jeff Sessions was such a conservative outlier on criminal justice issues that he pushed other Republicans to the forefront of his campaign to block a sentencing overhaul, figuring they would be taken more seriously. Now Mr. Sessions is attorney general and need not take a back seat to anyone when it comes to imposing his ultratough-on-crime views. The effect of his transition from being just one of 535 in Congress to being top dog at the Justice Department was underscored on Friday when he ordered federal prosecutors to make sure they threw the book at criminal defendants and pursued the toughest penalties possible. [continues 880 words]
When Attorney General Jeff Sessions last week jettisoned an Obama administration policy that had been aimed at sparing less-serious drug offenders from harsh sentences, he called his new, more aggressive approach "moral and just." But the verdict among law-enforcement and legal professionals is more mixed. Government data, along with interviews with former U.S. attorneys who advised the Justice Department under President Barack Obama, suggest the previous policy achieved several, though not all, of its goals. Then-Attorney General Eric Holder announced the policy that was to be embodied in what became known as the "Holder memo" in a 2013 speech to the American Bar Association. Mr. Holder pledged that federal prosecutors would focus on more dangerous drug traffickers and avoid charging less-serious offenders with crimes that required long, mandatory-minimum sentences. Mandatory-minimum sentences, he said, had led to bloated, costly prisons and disproportionately ravaged minority communities. [continues 702 words]
WASHINGTON - Attorney General Jeff Sessions is expected to soon toughen rules on prosecuting drug crimes, according to people familiar with internal deliberations, in what would be a major rollback of Obama-era policies that would put his first big stamp on a Justice Department he has criticized as soft on crime. Mr. Sessions has been reviewing a pair of memos issued by his predecessor, Eric H. Holder Jr., who encouraged federal prosecutors to use their discretion in what criminal charges they filed, particularly when those charges carried mandatory minimum penalties. [continues 729 words]
Even as Gov. Nathan Deal was signing the latest batch of state laws designed to keep lower-level offenders out of prison, the Trump administration was preparing a crackdown seeking the toughest possible charges against offenders convicted of nonviolent drug violations. The U.S. Justice Department released directives Friday that call for more mandatory minimum sentences and direct prosecutors to pursue the strictest punishments available. It was a sweeping shift in criminal justice policy, reversing Obama-era policies to reduce penalties for some nonviolent offenses. [continues 52 words]
WASHINGTON - Attorney General Jeff Sessions has ordered federal prosecutors to pursue the toughest possible charges and sentences against crime suspects, he announced Friday, reversing Obama administration efforts to ease penalties for some nonviolent drug violations. The drastic shift in criminal justice policy, foreshadowed during recent weeks, is Mr. Sessions's first major stamp on the Justice Department, and it highlights several of his top targets: drug dealing, gun crime and gang violence. In an eight-paragraph memo, Mr. Sessions returned to the guidance of President George W. Bush's administration by calling for more uniform punishments - including mandatory minimum sentences - and instructing prosecutors to pursue the harshest possible charges. Mr. Sessions's policy is broader than that of the Bush administration, however, and how it is carried out will depend more heavily on the judgments of United States attorneys and assistant attorneys general as they bring charges. [continues 843 words]
In a move expected to swell federal prisons, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is scuttling an Obama administration policy to avoid charging nonviolent, less-serious drug offenders with long, mandatory-minimum sentences. Mr. Sessions's new guidelines revive a policy created under President George W. Bush that tasked federal prosecutors with charging "the most serious readily provable offense." It is the latest and most significant step by the new administration toward dismantling President Barack Obama's criminal justice legacy. And it defies a trend in state capitals-including several led by conservative Republicans-toward recalibrating or abandoning the mandatory-minimum sentences popularized during the "war on drugs" of the 1980s and 1990s. [continues 820 words]
Dozens of activists, including some military veterans, plan to light joints Monday on the steps of the U.S. Capitol - federal land where committing the offense could draw a sentence of up to a year in jail - as part of an effort to urge a reluctant Congress to support marijuana legalization. "Monday @ High Noon" reads a flier for the event, calling on Congress to also remove marijuana from the nation's list of most-dangerous drugs. "Mass Civil Disobedience @ 4:20p - East Side of the US Capitol." [continues 611 words]
A majority of Americans and Canadians believe that marijuana should be legal. The governments of the two countries, however, appear to be moving in very different directions. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has been a staunch opponent of legalization for years, recently ordered a review of an Obama-era policy under which the federal government agreed not to interfere with state laws on marijuana, as long as the states took steps to regulate its distribution and use. Mr. Sessions's apparent goal is to make Washington the ultimate authority. [continues 503 words]
QUINCY, Mass. - At the edge of an industrial park in this suburb south of Boston, past a used-car auction lot and a defunct cheese factory, is an unmarked warehouse bristling with security cameras and bustling with activity. Until recently, the cinder-block structure was home to a wholesale florist, a granite cutter and a screen printer. Today, it is home to just one tenant: a medical marijuana operation called Ermont. Legalized marijuana has already upset societal norms, created a large legal gray area and generated a lucrative source of tax revenue. Now it is upending the real estate market, too. [continues 2332 words]
SANTA ROSA, Calif. - In the heart of Northern California's wine country, a civil engineer turned marijuana entrepreneur is adding a new dimension to the art of matching fine wines with gourmet food: cannabis and wine pairing dinners. Sam Edwards, co-founder of the Sonoma Cannabis Company, charges diners $100 to $150 for a meal that experiments with everything from marijuana-leaf pesto sauce to sniffs of cannabis flowers paired with sips of a crisp Russian River chardonnay. "It accentuates the intensity of your palate," Mr. Edwards, 30, said of the dinners, one of which was held recently at a winery with sweeping views of the Sonoma vineyards. "We are seeing what works and what flavors are coming out." [continues 827 words]
BLANCHESTER, Ohio - A life of farming taught Roger Winemiller plenty about harsh twists of fate: hailstorms and drought, ragweed infestations and jittery crop prices. He hadn't bargained on heroin. Then, in March 2016, Mr. Winemiller's daughter, Heather Himes, 31, died of an opioid overdose at the family farmhouse, inside a first-floor bathroom overlooking fields of corn and soybeans. Mr. Winemiller was the one who unlocked the bathroom door and found her slumped over, a syringe by her side. [continues 1994 words]
[photo] In this Aug. 9, 2016, photo, a vial containing 2mg of fentanyl, which will kill a human if ingested into the body, is displayed at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Testing and Research Laboratory in Sterling, Va. A 2mg dose of fentanyl is fatal to 99 percent of humans. A novel class of deadly drugs is exploding across the country, with many manufactured in China for export around the world. The drugs, synthetic opioids, are fueling the deadliest addiction crisis the U.S. has ever seen. (Cliff Owen / AP) [continues 760 words]
SAN FRANCISCO -- A US newspaper called on Washington to make sure that US aid to the Philippines is not used for President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial ran weeks before the kidnap-for-ransom-murder of a South Korean expatriate in the hands of Philippine National Police officers -- in the guise of an anti-drug operation--came to light and triggered an international outcry. The Post-Gazette editorialized on Jan. 2 that "Even in a roomful of tinhorn dictators, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines would out." [continues 215 words]
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Thursday commuted the 20-year prison sentenced imposed on Richard Ruiz Montes, convicted in 2008 for his role in the Modesto's pot-dealing California Healthcare Collective. In one of his final presidential acts, Obama used his executive authority to cut Montes' sentence by more than half. Now held at a federal facility in Atwater, according to the Bureau of Prisons' inmate locator, the 36-year-old Montes will be released May 19. He is identified as Richard by the White House and Bureau of Prisons, but has also been known as Ricardo. The White House listed his hometown as Escalon. [continues 184 words]
Even as more and more states allow their residents to use marijuana, the federal government is continuing to obstruct scientists from studying whether the drug is good or bad for people's health. A report published last week by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine points out that scientists who want to study cannabis have to seek approvals from federal, state and local agencies and depend on just one lab, at the University of Mississippi, for samples. As a result, far too little is known about the health effects of a substance that 28 states have decided can be used as medicine and eight states and the District of Columbia have approved for recreational use. [continues 408 words]
President Barack Obama on Thursday commuted the 20-year prison sentenced imposed on Richard Ruiz Montes, convicted in 2008 for his role in the Modesto's pot-dealing California Healthcare Collective. In one of his final presidential acts, Obama used his executive authority to cut Montes' sentence by more than half. Now held at a federal facility in Atwater, according to the Bureau of Prisons' inmate locator, the 36-year-old Montes will be released May 19. He is identified as Richard by the White House and Bureau of Prisons, but has also been known as Ricardo. The White House listed his hometown as Escalon. [continues 184 words]
[photo] It's been reported that President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) as his attorney general pick. Sessions has been a vocal opponent of the marijuana industry. (Scott Olson/ AP) President-elect Donald Trump's announcement that he plans to nominate Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions -- a vocal opponent of marijuana legalization - -- to be the country's next attorney general has many in the young but growing legalized marijuana industry deeply concerned. That includes in Pennsylvania, which legalized medical marijuana this spring. The state is expected to begin accepting applications for medical cannabis grower/processor and dispenser permits early next year, with the goal of making medical marijuana available to patients by 2018. [continues 889 words]
[photo] Cotton candy flavored marijuana is displayed for purchase at Butter & Weed's booth at 420 Vancouver, in Vancouver, B.C. on Wednesday, April 20, 2016. The legal marijuana industry proved its staying power in 2016, racking up $6.7 billion in business across North America. That number represents 30 percent growth from the year before, according to a report by Arcview Market Research, and it's expected to climb even higher over the next few years, topping $20 billion by 2021. [continues 424 words]
[photo] A cell at El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in Oklahoma. President Obama toured the prison last week. (Saul Loeb / AFP-Getty Images) A bipartisan push to reduce the number of low-level drug offenders in prison is gaining momentum in Congress, but proposals may disappoint advocates hoping to slash the mandatory minimum sentences that are seen as chiefly responsible for overcrowding in the nation's detention facilities. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) surprised advocates Thursday by saying he strongly supported holding a vote on a prison reform bill similar to one sponsored by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a moderate Republican from Wisconsin. The measure has been languishing in the House Judiciary Committee. [continues 694 words]
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to impose martial rule to prosecute his deadly war on drugs, three decades after the nation shed dictatorship with a famous "People Power" revolt. "If I wanted to, and it (the illegal drugs problem) will deteriorate into something really very virulent, I will declare martial law if I wanted to. No one will be able to stop me," Duterte said in a speech on Saturday night. The 71-year-old former state prosecutor said the aim would be "to preserve the Filipino people and the youth of this land". [continues 231 words]
[photo] Duterte tells civilians 'don't get yourselves kidnapped' as he orders troops to BOMB hostage-takers and threatens to declare martial law as part of Philippines' drug war * President Rodrigo Duterte say kidnap victims may become 'collateral damage' * Abu Sayyaf, which is linked to al-Qaeda, earns millions kidnapping for ransom * Duterte also threatened to bring in martial law in his campaign against drugs * His government also acted at the weekend to ban Filipinos watching Pornhub President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the military to 'blast' Islamist militants who have been on a kidnap-for-ransom spree in the Philippines, even if hostages would also be killed. [continues 759 words]
[photo] A marijuana bud. Across New England, two issues appear to be driving legislatures this year - - and they both have to do with drugs. States are grappling with the emergence of marijuana legalization. But the region is also the epicenter of the opioid crisis, with overdose rates in New Hampshire among the highest in the country. These two debates - separate, but not unrelated - transcend party. Marijuana legalization efforts have been supported by Democrats and Republicans, but none of the region's six governors fully support recreational use of the drug. On the opioid crisis as well, there is bipartisan consensus about the importance of the issue - as well as the fact there's no silver bullet to solve the problem. [continues 611 words]
Joseph Tigano III is spending 20 years in prison for growing marijuana. He grew a lot of it. No one disputes that. And this was his second felony conviction. So no one, not even Tigano's lawyers, suggests the Cattaraugus County man should go unpunished. But 20 years? Even the federal judge who sentenced Tigano in 2015 thought it was too heavy a price to pay. "It is much greater than necessary," U.S. District Judge Elizabeth A. Wolford said at the time, "but I do not have a choice." [continues 1120 words]
[photo] Marijuana plants are seen nearly ready for harvest at the Ataraxia medical marijuana cultivation center in Albion, Ill., on Sept. 15, 2015. (Seth Perlman, AP) The Obama administration has decided marijuana will remain on the list of most-dangerous drugs, fully rebuffing growing support across the country for broad legalization, but said it will allow more research into its medical uses. The decision to expand research into marijuana's medical potential could pave the way for the drug to be moved to a lesser category. Heroin, peyote and marijuana, among others, are considered Schedule I drugs because they have no medical application; cocaine and opiates, for example, have medical uses and, while still illegal for recreational use, are designated Schedule II drugs. [continues 769 words]
In his Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Jeff Sessions, President-elect Trump's nominee for attorney general, declined to say whether he'd adhere to the more lenient marijuana enforcement guidelines adopted by the Obama administration's Justice Department in states that have legalized medicinal or recreational marijuana use. "Would you use our federal resources to investigate and prosecute sick people who are using marijuana in accordance with their state laws, even though it might violate federal laws?" Senator Patrick Leahy (D.-Vermont) asked. [continues 641 words]
In November 2012, people in Colorado and Washington voted to legalize marijuana for recreational use in their states. Nine months later, as the states worked out their local legal regimes, then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. issued a directive to law enforcement, urging them to let the states' experiments proceed. By the end of 2016, a batch of new states had legalized marijuana, and Holder himself was advocating for marijuana to be "rescheduled" -- meaning that penalties should be lowered for sale and possession across the country. [continues 977 words]
An Indiana court has overturned a man's felony drug convictions because of a SWAT team's "unreasonable" search that endangered an infant, a decision that highlights growing concerns about the militarization of routine police work. The SWAT team executed a "military-style assault" and detonated a flash-bank grenade in close proximity to a 9-month-old after a confidential informant told detectives that he had seen marijuana, cocaine and a firearm in the home, according to the Indiana Court of Appeals' enumeration of the facts of the case. [continues 1243 words]
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, center, arrives in the Assembly chamber of the Statehouse to deliver his State Of The State address Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2017, in Trenton, N.J. (AP Photo/Mel Evans) TRENTON - Gov. Christie vowed Tuesday to devote his final year in office to battling drug addiction, skirting other challenges confronting New Jersey as he delivered an unusual and impassioned State of the State address focused almost exclusively on the issue. Telling personal stories of people affected by addiction - a state employee whose son died from a heroin overdose two days after she celebrated his sobriety at a Statehouse vigil; the son of a state Supreme Court justice, now in recovery and opening a treatment center - Christie said he hoped to make New Jersey an example for the nation on drug recovery. [continues 916 words]
The man responsible for more than two dozen heroin overdoses -- which all occurred in one day in a state deemed the ground zero for the opioid epidemic -- faces up to 20 years in federal prison. Bruce Lamar Griggs, 22, pleaded guilty on Monday to distribution of heroin, about six months after 26 people overdosed in Huntington, a city in the southwest corner of West Virginia. The 911 calls came within hours of one another, the majority of which concerned overdoses in and around one apartment complex. [continues 388 words]
[photo] Governor Chris Christie holds a baby boy facing perinatal addiction while the boy's grandmother looks on while he was touring the Jersey Shore Medical Center's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in Neptune, N.J. on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016. The baby boy is 49 days old and suffers from withdrawal symptoms transferred from his mother who had addiction issues. (Photo: Tim Larsen/Governor's office) With changes to health care among the top priorities for President-elect Donald Trump when he takes office next month, New Jersey is likely to gain greater flexibility in Medicaid and possibly help drug users get access to treatment, Gov. Chris Christie said Wednesday. [continues 421 words]
