By Morgan Godvin

Godvin is a community health education major at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. She lives in Portland.

I have lost my mom and three friends to opioid overdoses. I spent five years addicted to heroin, and I was sentenced to five years in prison for the overdose death of one of my best friends. Despite the era of mass incarceration in which we live, rates of drug use and overdose death continue to rise. Harsh sentences and increased criminalization are not solutions. Laws treating overdoses like homicides do nothing to reverse our opioid overdose epidemic.

Junkies hang out with other junkies. We are constantly in peril of excruciating withdrawal; we will do anything to ensure that our friends don’t experience it. We buy and sell from each other. There is no distinction between “dealer” and “user.” Most dealers are just junkies trying to support their habits. They are junkies first, dealers second.

On March 28, 2014, my friend Justin DeLong came over to my Gresham apartment. I sold him a gram of heroin out of my personal supply. It was the most normal, mundane thing. We had bought from each other hundreds of times over the previous five years.

That night Justin overdosed and died. I was informed of his death the next night when the Westside Interagency Narcotics team raided my apartment and placed me in handcuffs. Under Oregon law, I would have received probation. Instead, they handed the case over for federal prosecution. I was indicted for “delivery resulting in death.” My friend Justin became my “victim” for court proceedings, and I was sentenced to five years in prison. His mother never blamed me. She had watched me struggle with addiction alongside her son for years. She testified for me at my sentencing, refused restitution, and sent me cards while I was in prison. I was able to heal.

House Bill 2797, introduced earlier this session, proposed that anyone who supplies drugs to someone who dies from an overdose face a mandatory minimum sentence ranging from 58 to 130 months. The bill hasn’t advanced, but I suspect we have not seen the last of this type of proposition. I understand the sentiment that we must “do something,” but these laws are counter-productive. They will make people who use drugs even more afraid of law enforcement than they already are, which will in turn make them even more reluctant to call 911 during an overdose. People die when other people are afraid to call for help.

Law enforcement will use these laws to prosecute low-level dealers, just as this type of law was used to prosecute me. We are the low-hanging fruit. Human potential constrained by addiction gets obliterated by incarceration.

My four co-defendants and I were sentenced to a total of more than 60 years in prison for Justin’s death. The flow of heroin in Portland continued undeterred without even a single day’s interruption. Based on estimates from the Bureau of Prisons, the federal government will spend more than $1.8 million incarcerating my codefendants ­– who remain in prison ­– and me, and yet the flow of drugs is unchanged. We cannot incarcerate our way out of a public health crisis. We cannot continue with the same failed policies of criminalization and incarceration while tens of thousands of Americans die from overdoses. Laws designed to reduce the supply of drugs have failed. Where there is voracious demand, there will be ample supply.

My personal success is not because of the system, but despite it. I was fortunate to have strong social support during my incarceration and the financial resources to maintain contact with the outside world. After witnessing great injustices in our criminal justice system, I became inspired to change them and plan to pursue a law career. I know now that my addiction stemmed from hopelessness, a lack of direction and deep depression. Today I feel that I live a life with purpose and I have hope for my future; I no longer feel the need to use drugs.

To anyone who has lost a loved one to an overdose, I am so sorry for your loss. What we have here is a public health crisis, not a criminal crisis. I believe Oregonians should choose evidence-based policies over reactionary criminalization. Homicide-by-overdose laws do not reduce overdoses nor do they function as deterrents. Blame does not heal.