Remember the 1964 Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health that first linked cigarettes to cancer? Well, even if you don’t, it led to a successful national campaign against tobacco use. Yesterday, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a call for a cultural shift in how we think about addiction in his 426 page report “Facing Addiction in America.” In it, … Read More
Four Traits that Put Kids at Risk for Addiction
On Tuesday, voters approved the legalization of marijuana in California, Massachusetts, Nevada, and most likely in Maine, although that may face a recount. I did not support the initiative to legalize pot in California because I have seen too many students lose their edge and ambition as a result of heavy pot use and become passive zombies. Maia Szalavits, author … Read More
Smaller than a Snowflake
A synthetic drug called carfentanil, in an amount smaller than a snowflake, is killing people. More than 200 people in the Cincinnati area have overdosed on the drug in the last three weeks leaving 3 people dead. Similar overdoses have occurred in Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia and the Gulf coast of Florida overwhelming ambulance crews and emergency rooms. Carfentanil is … Read More
Phase Out Private For-Profit Prisons
On August 18th, the Obama administration said it would begin to phase out the use of private for-profit prisons to house federal inmates. The deputy attorney general, Sally Q. Yates said that private prisons do not save substantially on costs and provide fewer rehabilitative services like education and job training that reduce recidivism when inmates are released. From 1980 to … Read More
The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr
I have been reading Mary Karr’s excellent book, The Art of Memoir, and sharing it with my memoir group. I think is the best book on writing memoir out there. Karr knows what she’s talking about because she has written three memoirs, including Liar’s Club, Cherry and Lit, and she is often credited with popularizing the genre. I was teaching … Read More
CDC Takes Action to Stem Deaths from Drug Overdoses
There is an epidemic of deaths from drug overdoses in nearly every county across the U.S. driven by an increase in addiction to both prescription painkillers like OxyCondin, Vicodin and Percocet as well as heroin. The number of these deaths reached 47,055 people in 2014, equivalent to 125 Americans everyday. West Virginia, which has many blue-collar workers who tend to … Read More
Drug Overdoses for Young Whites an Epidemic: Police Chief’s Solution
The mortality rates for heart disease, HIV and cancer have decreased for young whites aged 25-34 while drug related deaths due to both oxycontin and heroin have skyrocketed. At the same time, the death rate for young blacks due to overdoses is falling. Young whites death rates for overdoses for both illegal and prescription drugs are the highest since the … Read More
Why ARE We Afraid of the Mentally Ill?
Last month 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier was shot dead by a Chicago police officer after his father placed a 911 call because LeGrier was acting irrationally, wielding a baseball bat. This was not his first confrontation with the law but the death of LeGrier, who suffered from mental illness, gained national attention because a bystander was also killed. 10 days after … Read More
Heroin: The Worst Drug Overdose Epidemic in United States History
Addiction to heroin, and deaths from heroin overdoses has gained much needed attention from the public, legislators and law enforcement. Why? Nearly 90% of those who tried heroin for the first time in the last decade were white. Deaths from heroin use rose to 8,260 in 2013, quadruple that of 2000. New Hampshire is one of the hardest hit states; … Read More
Police Chiefs, Sheriffs and Prosecutors Join Prison Reform Movement
In an abrupt change in philosophy, more than 130 top law enforcement officials including those from New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and others now support a roll back of tough laws and rigid judicial practices that have built a criminal justice system in the U.S. with the highest incarceration rate in the world. It also costs taxpayers $80 billion a … Read More
Heroic Actions for Prisoners’ Human Rights
A Psychologist Warden in Chicago and a Federal Court Decision in California address Prisoners’ Human Rights There are now 10 times as many mentally ill people in the nation’s 5000 jails and prisons as there are in state mental institutions. And these prisoners are more likely to be kept in solitary confinement and to be beaten by guards and other … Read More
A New Lease on Life
In 1992, Rudolph Norris, 58, was convicted of possessing and selling crack-cocaine and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. 30 years. He would have received a greatly reduced sentence for the same non-violent crime today but his conviction came during the war-on-drugs debacle of decades past. According to federal data, roughly ½ of the 1.5 million federal and state … Read More
De-Stigmatizing Methadone Treatment
We are being told that there’s a heroin epidemic in the United States that is killing scores of young people. The Midwest has become one of the hot spots of heroin use where it’s as easy to order it with your cell phone as it is to order pizza. Part of the reason there’s an increase of opiate use is … Read More
Criminal Justice Reform is Having a “National Moment”
This week President Obama visited a federal prison in El Reno, Oklahoma, marking the first time in history that any sitting president visited a prison. As the President looked into a 9 by 10 foot cell for 3 prisoners, containing 3 bunks, a night table with books, a small sink and toilet with no seat, he reflected on the life … Read More