Heroin problem: 'We're not going to arrest our way out of this'

The Dispatch / The Rock Island Argus [IL] ^ | January 18, 2015 | Rachel Warmke

[ConservingFreedom]

Local law enforcers, such as Rock Island County State's Attorney John McGehee and Quad City Metropolitan Enforcement Director Kevin Winslow say the solution to the heroin problem is to stop the dealers.

"We don't focus on addicts and users," Mr. Winslow said. "I think law enforcement as a whole wants to get the source of the problem."

In 2014, local officials filed their first case of drug-induced homicide against Jamil Steward, 26, of East Moline, who was accused of selling heroin that caused the overdose death of Michael Reid, 26, of Silvis.

Mr. Steward entered an Alford plea on Dec. 8 to felony unlawful delivery and is serving seven years in prison. In an Alford plea, the defendant doesn't plead guilty but admits there is enough evidence to convict him.

Similar cases have been brought to federal court, where the penalties are stiffer.

Prison not the answer

Not everyone thinks prison is the answer.

Former Davenport police officer Brian Gaughan was 20 when began his career in 1980. He said he became disenchanted with the War on Drugs while working as an undercover cop in Chicago.

He said he befriended a drug dealer to gather information against him and, at one point, was taken aside by the dealer's mother, who thanked him for being a positive influence on her son, who had gotten involved with the wrong crowd after his father died.

That conversation was life-altering, said Mr. Gaughan, who left police work for a career in firefighting. Now a speaker with the national nonprofit Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, he advocates for decriminalization and regulation of controlled substances in the United States.

"Arresting a dealer doesn't solve any problems at all," he said. "In fact, it exacerbates problems.”

Game of whack-a-mole

He believes the theory that "going after dealers will mean less drugs" is misguided, comparing it to a game of whack-a-mole -- "You arrest one guy and three more pop up.”

Mr. Gaughan said there's an endless supply of drug dealers to replace ones who are arrested, and that can lead to turf wars and gang violence.

He supports reform of the criminal justice system, saying more resources should be allocated for drug treatment and social support on the front end to reduce demand and curb drug-related criminal behavior.

“We spend an awful lot of money in jailing people. We don't spend nearly as much money treating them,” said Mary Engholm, executive director of the Rock Island County Council on Addictions.

Overcrowding and lack of local treatment providers has led to lengthy wait times for treatment and limited long-term case management, she said.

That's created a “different class of criminal,” including users -- some homeless and without proper help -- who commit petty crimes and cycle in and out of the courts like a "revolving door," Ms. Engholm said.

More people have been able to access treatment since the Affordable Care Act was passed, but RICCA's long-term residential facility remains filled to its 34-bed capacity, she said.

Naloxone for overdoses

In Iowa, activists are seeking to pass a Good Samaritan law similar to ones passed in Illinois and 19 other states that allow people to report an emergency overdose without fear of being arrested.

"It could save lives," said Kim Brown, of Davenport, co-founder of the QC Overdose Awareness Walk, an annual event that started last year. The bill would allow over-the-counter purchase of Naloxone, a drug carried by paramedics that can reverse opiate overdoses, she said.

According to the Trust for American Health, a national group concerned about a prescription drug “epidemic,” from 1999 through 2013, the number of drug overdose deaths quadrupled in Iowa and increased by 49 percent in Illinois.

Ms. Brown, whose 33-year-old son Andy died from an overdose in May 2011, believes those numbers could be reduced if Naloxone were more readily available.

She said her son was a fun-loving man who played football and loved his two sons. She doesn't know when his addiction began, but she speculated it may have been after he was prescribed opiates following a surgical procedure.

No one wants to be an addict

“Nobody's born saying they want to grow up to become an addict.” Ms. Brown said, adding that addicts often are “stigmatized and shamed” rather than treated. “We've got to find a better way.”

Mr. Gaughan points to places such as Portugal, where drug use was decriminalized in 2001, and Switzerland, which offers heroin addicts access to clinics with clean needles and pure heroin as part of drug treatment services, as examples to emulate.

“Putting someone in a cage doesn't solve the problem at all,” he said.

Mr. Winslow said he realizes "we're not going to arrest our way out of this."

He recommends a coordinated effort by local police, courts and treatment centers to identify and treat the source of addiction for users, while halting those who profit from heroin distribution.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Thank you. :)

[Marie]

I was on Dilaudid for three weeks after my spinal surgery. My pain management dr took over from there and dropped me to Oxycotin at that point.

The sudden drop put me into withdrawals. They didn’t tell me what was happening and I went though hell in ignorance.

It was the worst pain that I’ve ever had. As bad as induced chidbirth - only it went on for ten straight days. I really believed that I was dying and I hurt too much to ask for help. I just accepted that fate and waited for it to happen. My skin hurt. Every nerve in my body screamed in pain. I was so cold, but I was sweating out every drop of fluid. My guts turned inside out.

It was worse than any flu or episode of food poisoning that I ever had.

Labor. Transition labor. That’s what this pain compared to. Ten days of every nerve in your body screaming in unbelievable pain. That’s detox.

For the last year, I’ve been trying to get off my pain meds, but I’m terrified to talk to my doctor. I’m terrified to tell her that I want to get off because I’m scared that she’s just going to cut me off the second that I admit that the opiates are having a negative effect on my life.

So, what’s the solution for addicts?

Other countries are having success with treating heroin with... heroin.

You give the addict what they need to be happy for 24 hours. Every day, they must come get their new supply. Every day they’re offered the option to choose HUMANE rehabilitation or to take their drugs.

They don’t use dealers because the dealers are unnecessary. They don’t share and create new addicts because they don’t have enough to introduce a new user. The dealers go out of business.

No new addicts. Dealers gone. Addicts willingly taking the walk through the rehab door. Addicts allowed to work and function as members of society instead of being denied work while struggling.

There is a better way to do this and I go for results. I didn’t sympathize with addicts until I went through my own detox and realized how horrible it really was.

We need to fight the WOD effectively. We’re wrong with the ‘tough love’ approach and it’s time to try a program that actually works.

Give heroin addicts a safe supply of heroin and give them a safe way ‘out’. Opiate withdrawal doesn’t have to be so painful. Cut off the dealers and stop new addictions from happening.

Right now I’m trying to get off hydrocodone. Physician prescribed opiates. And it hurts more than anyone can know. Every 25% drop in daily dose makes me feel like I’ve been hammered for a full week. It’s actually making my chronic pain much worse. I am more sensitive.

LEAP is right. The WOD is wrong-headed.

We can do better.

[Marie]

If it worked, they wouldn’t have more people to hang every year.

It doesn’t work. The profit is too large for people to take the risk.

What works is to cut off the dealer by prescribing each addict their daily dose of great heroin and giving the option for humane detox every day. You stop new addicts from being created and gradually reduce your population of old addicts.

[Marie]

I have never taken illegal drugs.

My addiction was caused by doctors.

Why? Because they really don’t have a good way of dealing with chronic pain otherwise.

Modern medicine hasn’t solved this problem.

[Marie]

What about people like me? What about people who stayed within the medical system and became dependent on opiates thanks to doctors who have no other way to deal with chronic pain?

After detoxing from dilaudid, I’ve got a few things to say about how addicts are treated.

It was the single most painful, agonizing ten days of my life. As bad as transition labor - only it went on for more than a week.

Addicts are afraid of that. And they should be. You cannot feel more pain than opiate withdrawal. You simply cannot feel more pain.

Give them the option of HUMANE detox and give them enough of a comfortable supply for them to consider taking the walk through the rehab door.

Treat them like people.

My doctors addicted me to opiates and I’m still fighting that battle (on my own). My pain was real and did require that amount of pain meds, but there does come an end for some of us and there is no end to opiates. They make you hypersensitive and create greater pain.

Be kind. Understand that you can’t understand. Accept that you cannot comprehend the pain of detox until you’ve felt it. Then understand the it’s so bad that YOU would do anything to avoid that pain.

[Lurker]

He cares as much about you as he does about the Constitution, which sadly, is not at all.

Best of luck to you.

[rawcatslyentist]

>"Make no mistake, there are people who profit from this, on both sides of the war. "

That would explain Hussein and the Sinolas.

Isn't it time to declare economic warfare against the sleazy back alley immoral pushers? Take their profit motive away from them! Force them to find other means of support!

Shine the light of day on them! Bring their sales out in the open where everybody can see.

There were no drive by gang wars when any one could legally buy what they wanted at the drug store without the kings permission.

It WORKED THEN.

It is NOT working now!

[Smokin' Joe]

Too many other people are steering them the other way.

SO true..

"It's just like alcohol...."

It's MY body, I am not hurting anyone else"

"I can quit any time, I'm not an addict..."

And other fables abound, and the distribution and use are glorified by award winning shows.

It is particularly tough to be a parent now, and when your kid can end up in deep poo over a cigarette or a beer, why not do whatever?

Even a 'clean cut' peer group is little guarantee, and it is almost as hard to escape references to it as sex in the media and pop culture.

[RFEngineer]

“If you think it’s easier to get Heroin than beer, you are deluded. “

$10 gets you a hit of heroin just about anywhere in America. Are you really that daft?

Get caught buying beer, or with beer underage, and you’ll be slammed.

Yes, it is easier to get heroin than beer. Times have changed when you weren’t paying attention.

“Note how I completely ignore the fact that you deliberately misstated my point?”

Are you whining? I think you are.

[cherry]

I guess we could call jail a "treatment center"...the leftists change the meaning of words and phrases all the time....

deep down in my heart what I believe is that lots of people are just lazy pleasure seekers....

I'm 61 and every joint in my body seems to be in pain every day or most days...

but I have a job...I have responsibilities...I have bills to pay...

so I CAN'T AFFORD TO BE A DRUG ADDICT OR A DRUNK....

see how that works?......make people start early in life taking responsibility and this drug/alcohol sloth does not happen....work happens...family happens...church happens...

[Smokin' Joe]

I don't know how I even ever had time to drink, but I haven't had time for that the last 25 years. I understand it is a lot more expensive, now.

As for responsibility, I agree, I have been working since I was old enough to help (grew up on a tobacco farm), and I reckon I'll be working until I die.

I'm the family patriarch, for all practical purposes, right down to the 7 great grand kids, so I am the one to set the examples.

But there is a funny thing about responsibility. If you don't embrace it, it doesn't help.

We embraced it because with responsibility came privileges, so long as you continued to be responsible, and those privileges were worth a lot in terms of self-respect and the respect of others.

It isn't the same world. People would have fits seeing a 10 or 12 year old driving a bulldozer or a tractor, and that was the beginning of the things we got to do once we'd shown we could be trusted to do them.

As for those who won't embrace responsibility (or are prohibited by law from doing so--too young), I have seen plenty of that, from people who would have been my age had they lived, to those my grandkids' ages.

You can lead a horse to water, but if they can't drink they will resent the trip, and if they can, that doesn't mean they will. They don't have much to look forward to besides running the french fry machine when they turn 16, and by then we were running fire and ambulance calls.

As for jail being a "treatment center", from what I have been told (I have no first-hand knowledge), you can get anything on the inside you can get on the outside, sometimes easier. With all the bad attitudes and people who have made it their life's aim to skate out on responsibilities great and small, I doubt there will be much success there, either. It will only keep them from screwing with people on the outside, and sometimes, that's plenty good.

[DiogenesLamp]

Give them the option of HUMANE detox and give them enough of a comfortable supply for them to consider taking the walk through the rehab door.

Treat them like people.

I have empathy for people who got stuck on drugs. I've known a lot of them, and it is very difficult to put your life right after this. As one Heroin addict told me, "I will always be craving that drug."

Again, the best answer is to never let someone get so strung out. Trying to repair damage after the fact is more difficult than preventing it in the first place.

[DiogenesLamp]

There were no drive by gang wars when any one could legally buy what they wanted at the drug store without the kings permission.

It WORKED THEN.

What are you thinking "Worked" then? Free access to drugs the vast majority of people had no experience or understanding of? No, that didn't "Work", it was simply a logistical problem. Till a large enough segment of a population can produce a large enough demand to produce a large enough supply, drug addiction gets starved from lack of access.

You provide large enough access to a large enough supply of drugs, and you will find out that it doesn't "work" at all.

[DiogenesLamp]

Agreed.

[Chickensoup]

Personally, I think that all drug access should be available.

One caveat. No services, no healthcare, no housing and no food. And isolation in mini areas.

If sallies or some other private agency wants to minister to them on the agencies terms, have at them.

But nothing, absolutely nothing from the citizens taxes.

[DiogenesLamp]

$10 gets you a hit of heroin just about anywhere in America. Are you really that daft?

Maybe where you live, but not around my community. You can get a rock of crack for $20.00, or Crystal Meth even cheaper, but Heroin is not easily available at all, and then you have to have some serious money to even find it.

Yes, it is easier to get heroin than beer. Times have changed when you weren’t paying attention.

That is just nonsense. I can point you to several dozens of teenagers who have absolutely no difficulty at getting beer (or hard liquor) but the people I know in the drug scene would even have a hard time finding any Heroin.

I know teens that have weekly beer pong parties and get drunk on both Friday and Saturday nights. They get hard liquor and Weed too if they want it.

Are you whining? I think you are.

Yeah, when I point out that you are being dishonest in your methods of debate, i'm not calling your competence or character into question, i'm "Whining." That's what I would say too.

[Marie]

I agree. The goal should be to stop creating new addicts.

But the WOD has proven itself ineffective on that front. We have the same rate of addiction that we had before the WOD was started.

Where are they having success in that area? In places where they’ve legalized heroin, and set up heroin clinics and humane rehab facilities.

See, it seems that if a heroin addict has a 24 hour supply of his drug - but that’s all he has - he’s less likely to share. Dealers are being driven out of business and there’s nobody to introduce naive people to the drug. As addicts receive treatment and fewer new addictions are being created, the problem is now under control. (In one country, they’ve dropped their OD rate to ZERO. Another funny side-effect is that, by treating an addiction as a medical issue and not a criminal one, addicts are able to work and be productive members of society instead of being unable to find work with a criminal record. Legalization and regulation works.)

I’m never going to say that rampant drug use is a good thing. I’m saying that we’re fighting the ‘war’ in an ineffective way and we’ve got to try something different.

[RFEngineer]

“Yeah, when I point out that you are being dishonest in your methods of debate, i’m not calling your competence or character into question, i’m “Whining.” That’s what I would say too.”

Congratulations, you have graduated from the “Obama School of Debate”.

Either agree with you or you are....dishonest, incompetent, lack character.

Keep up the good work, Mr. President.

[SZonian]

"But the WOD has proven itself ineffective on that front."

Because like all of our "military" engagements since WWII, we aren't fighting it to win...

In order to win a war, you must bring down total destruction upon your enemy...in reality, we're only skirmishing with them.

Unless and until we're actually willing to rain complete and utter destruction on the "enemy", we're not going to make any progress against either supply or demand.

[DiogenesLamp]

But the WOD has proven itself ineffective on that front. We have the same rate of addiction that we had before the WOD was started.

This is an incorrect way to look at the available data. Would you say that the "War on Murder" wasn't working because we still have murders?

It is irrational to believe that with our current approach that we can reduce the rate of addiction (which has been at ~2% for over 100 years.) What the current efforts do is to STOP AN INCREASE.

The NORMAL trend of drug addiction in any society is a constant increase. This is not a theory, we have an actual example that proves this.

And a more in depth chart.

What you are seeing in both these charts is something called a "Logistical growth curve." It is applicable to the spread of disease, or in this case, drug addiction, based on the availability of supply and the exponentially increasing numbers of social contacts.

The NORM is that drug usage will continuously increase. To hold it flat (No increase in 100 years) requires considerable effort, and it is proof of the success of the effort to suppress it.