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espressocycle t1_j72aw94 wrote

Reply to comment by throwawaitnine in Mayoral Candidate Rebecca Rhynhart lays out plan of attack for opioid crisis from Kensington by ColdJay64

It's called harm reduction.Safe, legal heroin would reduce the overdoses and violence. I mean back when the pill mills were in business people with opioid addictions got their pills and went to work. It wasn't ideal but when you took that away they ended up on the streets.

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throwawaitnine t1_j735bfz wrote

I totally understand the concept and where the idea of harm reduction is coming from. I respect the idea of harm reduction and I think it comes from a good place.

To me, I think about a person I was close with being hooked on drugs, crack, throwing their life away, destroying their body, destroying all their relationships and many close calls with death. I think about how I felt and his family felt when he was arrested, relieved. I remember when he was jailed, we were hopeful. In that moment of sobriety, he opted for inpatient rehab. That's the kind of intervention I think we need. I

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jersey_girl660 t1_j78alf6 wrote

Jail is not treatment. While we absolutely should be incorporating treatment into jail for those who have to go it’s not a system meant to treat addicts.

Make no mistake majority of people don’t end up like your friend. Majority end up either dead or worse off then they were.

Jail is not treatment. Also we don’t have the room in jails to do that anyways. So we should let dangerous criminals out instead of fixing the system actually meant for SUD?

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throwawaitnine t1_j78h47r wrote

My friend was jailed briefly before taking a plea deal which had him in a 30 day inpatient rehab in lieu of a prison sentence. The time he spent in jail was because he couldn't post bail. In today's climate, he wouldn't have been arrested, or jailed or kept in custody awaiting a trial.

I don't think prison is an answer, although there are certainly addicts who should be in prison for the actions they take to support their addiction. There should be an infrastructure in place, in prisons, to treat addicts for are incarcerated.

I strongly believe that most addicts, should be arrested, charged and forced into 30 day rehab in lieu of a prison sentence. If we don't have the beds for that, we should make the beds for that. We should spend whatever money is necessary to force people through detox and into treatment at every opportunity. As a society we should put our foot down and say, no, you will not get high on heroin with impunity.

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