Massachusetts' highest court soon takes up a controversial case that raises provocative questions about the criminal justice system and addiction.

The case asks if it's constitutional to require someone on probation to remain drug-free. Some say it could be one of the most important cases before the state Supreme Judicial Court in the past decade.

The case involves 29-year-old Julie Eldred, who was put on probation for a year in 2016 for a larceny charge. Her probation conditions stipulated that she remain drug-free and submit to random drug tests. One of those tests — taken 12 days after Eldred was placed on probation -- came up positive for the opioid fentanyl. Because that was a violation of her probation, she was sent to jail.

"I was in the midst of active addiction, so I was actively using," Eldred said. "But you're forced to go into this saying, 'I'll be drug-free,' or you go to jail."

Eldred says she complied with all other probation conditions — she got into an outpatient addiction treatment program, found a therapist, and started medication-assisted treatment with the drug Suboxone.

"I had one relapse," Elred said. "I told my Suboxone doctor, so he upped my Suboxone. And my PO [probation officer] had happened to call me in the next day. She didn't look at that picture, she didn't look that I had just gotten started getting everything in order. She just saw that I had a dirty urine and sent me in front of the judge to go to jail."

Eldred was sent to MCI-Framingham, where she received no treatment.

"I had a cellmate that was in there for murder but she wasn't sentenced yet," Eldred said. "You're with people who know they're going to be sentenced and they know they're going to be in there a long time so they don't care. There is a lot of violence, girls will jump you. It's scary."

Ten days later, Eldred was released after her lawyer found a treatment bed. Eldred's lawyer, Lisa Newman-Polk, says punishing people for drug use is not a deterrent.

"This idea that a court can order a person to stop using with the threat of punishment is not grounded in reality," Newman-Polk said. "If it worked to punish people for their addiction and for relapse we would have a cured nation."