[From article]
But there aren’t nearly enough beds at licensed treatment facilities, which means many addicts are sent to prison instead: men to a prison in Bridgewater and women to MCI-Framingham. There, they are treated like prisoners, not like patients trying to escape a serious, chronic illness.
This editorial makes it sound as if heroin addicts are victims of the criminal justice system. Did government bureaucrats force them to ingest drugs? Is there a taxpayer funded conspiracy which encourages people to abuse drugs? Is a lack of discipline, a weakness of will an illness? How does one correct that? Can psychiatric drugs strengthen willpower, discipline? On Super Bowl Sunday NYC police reported they found Philip Seymour Hoffman dead with a heroin needle in his arm. Was he unable to afford the prescription form of these opiates?
More troubling is the apparent misguided belief of the editorial writers that state courts in Massachusetts incarcerate people for being drug addicts. That would be a status crime prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. These people have committed a crime, possession, sale, larceny, burglary, assault, threats, something that is a violation of a criminal statute. Police cannot and do not arrest people for being a drug addict. That practice ended about 70 years ago.
This sounds more like a PR piece promoted by the human services industrial complex (State Rep. Marie Parente's term) for more taxpayer funds.
http://cambridge.wickedlocal.
EDITORIAL: Heroin crisis demands a better treatment system
Cambridge Chronicle
Posted Feb. 1, 2014 @ 12:04 pm
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