MANSFIELD: Accidental Suicide

 

A recent event, “Bridging the Gap: Opiates vs. Crack,” which was billed as a community symposium, featured panelists that included the Hon. Lauren Moore, municipal drug court judge; the Hon. Joan Synenberg, recovery court judge of Common Pleas Court; and Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley. Also scheduled to participate were other court personnel, counselors and a research associate from Case Western Reserve University.

I briefly toyed with the idea of attending the event but then thought better of it. I didn’t want my blood pressure shooting through the roof as unworkable solutions were again being put forth as serious answers to this deadly epidemic. Our young people are dying in droves from opioid overdoses and we continue to treat addiction as a legal or moral problem, instead of the medical problem that it is.

It’s really not the fault of the good and well-meaning people on the panel. I think they know better, but they all have to run for office so their ability to speak candidly on the issue of addiction is severely limited. They have to say what the folks who voted them into office expect them to say. On the other hand, while I might be running for elective office, I still can speak frankly on the issue, and the truth is, the methods the people associated with the criminal justice system put forth cannot and will not work.

If they could work, the “war on drugs” would have been won years ago, instead of us continuing to fight it for the last half-century, all the while destroying lives, families and countries in the process. What’s that they say about one definition of insanity: To keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?

Fortunately, forward-thinking folks in a few cities around the country are beginning to engage in European style “harm reduction,” strategies that place saving lives above everything else, even use reduction strategies.

They are offering “safe injection sites” where addicts can safely shoot up without all of the concerns of shooting up in a hotel room or the back seat of a car. If they have a negative reaction to the drug someone is there to keep them alive, which is what society should be trying to do, instead of seeking to punish them for their behavior.

The next level — the one that will prevent “accidental suicide” — will be for the injection sites to provide addicts with safe amounts of unadulterated drugs to ingest via syringes. The reason our young people are dying is due to them shooting up with whatever a dealer sells them. And we have government officials, who — in their infinite wisdom — decided to choke off the supply of safe hospital-grade opioids, thus forcing addicts to back alleys to cop their drugs to thank for this situation.

I can just hear all of the bluenoses babbling away — “they should just stop using!” — which is a lot easier said than done. After all, we created the world these young people are trying to escape from; we should have a bit more sympathy.

Years ago a needle exchange program was established in Cuyahoga County, and the hue and cry from the right end of the political spectrum was deafening. But it eventually faded away. The same thing will happen if we provide addicts with pure drugs and a safe place to inject them: The noise from reactionaries will again be deafening, but will eventually fade.

But for this to happen, the good folks who put on the symposium have to take their collective head out of the sand and stand up to the voters who elected them and simply tell them the truth: This is the right thing to do. Until our legal leaders gain the courage to tell the truth and then act on it, our young people will continue to die in record numbers.

Shame on us.

From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.

 

 

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