The evolution of the justice system’s efforts to curb the heroin and opiate epidemic ravaging the country, and specifically Ohio, has brought us to a parade of headlines that have prosecutors going not just after drug dealers, but those who enable and provide and use with addicts who end up dead. Sometimes that means friends, sometimes that means girlfriends and boyfriends, sometimes that means low-level dealers. The manslaughter cases have been piling up. One tipped toward its conclusion down in Akron this week. You can read about it here. It’s sad, of course. We’d just like to tease out the closing quote from the presiding judge, Lynne Callahan.
“I never in my life thought I’d see the day, as a judge, when I’d ask someone ‘What’s your drug of choice?’ and they’d say ‘crack’ and I’d think ‘Oh, thank God,” Callahan said. “It figuratively kills me; it’s literally killing this community. I have no sympathy for those who are putting it on the streets.”
That’s where we are: Thank god when it’s just crack.
This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 3, 2015.
So, if the justice system (and I use the term loosely) wants to charge someone that was around if somebody else OD’s, then it is inviting more deaths. Most junkies will try to help another addict who goes out – but if the one trying to help is going to be charged, that help is less likely to be there. An addict acts through his/her own compulsion and it is a lonely enough life already, so don’t try to isolate these people even more. Better yet, if you really want to help the problem, legalize and regulate it. By your own admission, you aren’t helping the problem or the addicts as it is now, and has been forever.
Go back to the liberal hole you crawled out of, despicable to say let’s enable these people to use drugs. You clown they chose to use so they are responsible for the consequences. Its people like you and that dumb line of thought that is slowly killing what america was.
Actually that man is right. It works in other countries why would it not work here? That way of thinking that America was better way back when is the close minded attitude that inhibits progress and learning. Change is the ONLY constant in life.
It’s odd though, responsibilityforyouractiona (think you mean actionS, but your kind is certainly no stranger to typos), that we have been tough on drug crime for all these years, as your ilk prescribes as the answer, yet drug use has continually gotten worse over that time. But I know facts and reality won’t crack your bubble.
When you have the two headed monster of the big pharma getting them hooked with percs and OxyContin and our military actively guarding poppy fields in Afganistan ensuring record yields this year, really makes you wonder who the bad guys are. I really can’t wait for the Hollywood movie 10-15 years from now about the military connected guy being the kingpin of smack…..didn’t Denzel Washington already make that movie.