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Jailing addicts does not reduce the demand for heroin. Jailing addicts merely overcrowds prisons and wastes taxpayer money.

(Martin Griff/The Times of Trenton)

Time out for a broken record alert: The most rational way to attack the appalling heroin epidemic is to expand access to treatment, which requires money.



And the most irrational way to reduce the demand for heroin is to imprison addicts and non-violent offenders, which requires even more money.

But for reasons that elude us, some lawmakers refuse to accept these immutable truths. So the Assembly will vote Thursday on a bill that calls for a drastic ramp-up in sentences for heroin manufacturing, distribution, and possession, which effectively doubles prison time even for non-dealers.

If this bill became law – which is highly unlikely, because the Senate and the governor have a more nuanced understanding of the public health aspect of addiction – someone with 2.5 ounces of heroin or an opioid would be guilty of a first-degree crime, and get slammed with 20 years in prison and up to $500,000 in fines.

If you're having trouble embracing the logic of that, consider this: Nowhere in the five pages of A-783 does the word "treatment" appear, not even once.

Yes, drug convictions should absolutely be a life-changer.

But addicts cannot change while they are warehoused in a five-by-seven prison cell.



This bill was based on the flawed 2013 report from the State Commission of Investigation, which concluded that the best way to fight heroin addiction is by making laws more punitive, ignoring the fact that incarcerating addicts is a pointless strategy that does little but waste money and ruin lives.

How much money? In this case, the legislative fiscal estimate for this bill is $3.4 million by Year 3, $2.1 million for Year 4, and another $2.1 million for Year 5. What would that $7.7 million buy? Another 178 jail beds, filled with addicts or non-violent offenders who were forgotten by the system.

That same $7.7 million could pay for the 256 addicts for a full year at inpatient treatment facilities, facilities that already have waiting lists that stretch from here to Alpha Centauri. Half the adults who want drug treatment in this state cannot afford it; two-thirds of adolescents who need treatment cannot access it. Too many of them die as they wait, and too many others just occupy jail cells.

Yet with an already-massive hole in the public purse, there are legislators who believe we can spend $7.7 million on a bloated corrections system that does nothing to mitigate a public health crisis. This does not compute, and the myopic aims of this bill are alarming.

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