Could Charging Survivors Of Overdose With A Misdemeanor Help Curb Drug Use?

There is no doubt that America is not winning the war on drugs. Some statistics indicate that things might just be getting worse. It isn’t about cocaine or street drugs anymore; due to the increase in opioid usage across the nation, drug overdosing is reaching epidemic proportions.

When it comes to addiction old habits die hard — literally — and law enforcement is being continually challenged about how to tackle the problem. New laws and regulations regarding prescription medication are barely doing anything besides inconveniencing those who honestly need the medication. The laws don’t touch those who use and sell drugs illegally, so officers aren’t having an easy time finding a way to curb America’s obsession with addiction.

An Ohio police chief is trying to do something in his county to make a dent in the drug epidemic he sees firsthand. There is talk of giving police officers the ability to charge those who overdose with misdemeanor charges. Although right now it’s just talk, the hope is that the scare might be enough to make the user, change. Last month, Washington Courthouse police began to threaten those who were found overdosing on heroin with misdemeanor charges.

A misdemeanor charge carries with it the potential to spend up to 180 days in jail and as much as $1000 in fines. Although it’s a potential deterrent, charging users with a misdemeanor will force them into a court-ordered drug recovery and treatment program — an option that right now is not possible but is necessary for overdose victims.

The problem of drug overdosing is likely due to the increase in prescription drugs. Just two short decades ago, there was a push in the medical community to address pain more effectively. Insisting that chronic pain was being ignored and under-treated, physicians across the US were encouraged to write more prescriptions for opioid medications like Oxycontin and Vicodin, without ever foreseeing the consequences of what the introduction of those drugs might do.

Many people who start down the path to hard street drugs start with prescription medication. When they no longer can get them, they chase the high through darker street drugs that are just as addictive if not more so. According to a misdemeanor lawyer, this is an entire chain reaction to a medical paradigm shift, and America is just now realizing the public health situation they have inadvertently begun.

To tackle prescription drug addiction, physicians are now being given stricter guidelines about who to prescribe to and how the drugs are prescribed, and the DEA is much more observant about prescription pads and filling. Counting the number of days of prescribed medication, along with requiring identification for getting opioids, are just some of the changes taking place in the healthcare industry.

The problem is that drugs are like a Pandora’s box. Now that the high has gotten out of the medicine cabinet and found its way into middle America, making a dent in controlling it has been met with very little success. Epidemic overdoses and addiction are being found from the streets of New York City to small-town high schools in rural towns across the country. It isn’t just prescription drugs, either — drugs that were once considered taboo, like heroin, are finding their way into American schools with deadly consequences.

The police of Ohio may not be doing anything all that drastic with their new plan, but they are at least trying to think outside the box. Trying to decrease drug use has been going on for as long as America has existed. From Prohibition to minimum-sentencing laws, very little has made a difference. If someone is addicted and wants to find drugs, they don’t have to look very far to obtain them.

The old way of taking out the little guy by punishing small-time drug offenders is doing nothing but overcrowding our jails and providing very little recovery. The hope in Ohio, as in every small town in America, is to stop the spread of drugs and the carnage that they can leave on a family and a community. Whether the misdemeanor charge will work or not on a large scale is doubtful, but if it can force one addict to get clean and save one life, then it is a worthwhile measure.