While the majority of law enforcement agencies all throughout the United Staes continue to treat drug users as if they were average criminals, some have cast out their past methods and picked up a more common sense approach to handling the impact addiction has made on their city streets.
As an alternative to apprehending drug offenders and passing them off to the criminal justice system, the Gloucester Police Department in Massachusetts has made the decision to offer complimentary treatment program for which they will provide payment.
This month, Police Chief Leonard Campanello took to the department’s Facebook page to release details that any addict who walks into police headquarters and gives up what drugs they have on them along with any paraphernalia will not be charged with a crime. However, these individuals will receive an “angel” that will immediately begin to help them through the recovery process. “Not in hours or days, but on the spot,” Campanello wrote, documenting that the department has partnered up with Addison Gilbert Hospital and Lahey Clinic in order to speed up rehabilitation efforts for people who are searching for help through the police force.
Stemming from the philosophy of “attacking the demand rather than attacking the supply,” Campanello, who worked many years as a narcotics law official can identify that individuals addicted to opiates are not criminals, yet instead they are suffering from a crippling disease in contrast to an insatiable nicotine addiction.
“The reasons for the difference in care between a tobacco addict and an opiate addict is stigma and money,” he stated. Petty reasons to lose a life.
Rather than using the money that has been seized from drug dealers to afford the finer things for the department, Gloucester Police plan to use for nasal narcan, an overdose antidote, which will be distributed whit the assistance of local pharmacies for drug users who do not have health insurance.
“We will save lives with the money from the pockets of those who would take them,” Campanello stated on aFacebook post. “We recognize that nasal narcan is not the answer, but it is saving lives and no one in this City will be denied a life saving drug for this disease just because of a lack of insurance.”
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1 comment
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