Pubdate: Mon, 17 Feb 2014
Source: Buffalo News (NY)
Copyright: 2014 The Buffalo News
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/GXIzebQL
Website: http://www.buffalonews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/61
Author: Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune
Page: A7

CELEBRITY DRUG DEATHS

As a long-time fan of Philip Seymour Hoffman's work, I view the
widespread reactions of grief over his death with a mixture of
appreciation and dread.

As a fan, I appreciate the recognition that this Oscar-winning actor's
astounding talents richly deserved.

But I also brace myself for the sort of anger-driven, self-defeating,
lock'em-up anti-drug crusades that too often have followed shocking
drug-related celebrity deaths.

Such high-profile tragedies as the 1970 drug-related deaths of rock
stars Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, for example, helped fuel the
Nixon administration's "war on drugs" and numerous "zero tolerance"
state drug laws that filled prisons with long sentences for nonviolent
offenders.

So did the Reagan-era war against crack cocaine and other drugs in the
1980s following the shocking cocaine overdose of rising basketball
star Len Bias.

Every heroin death is tragic, but Hoffman's death had a special
bracing resonance. He was found dead at age 46 of an apparent heroin
overdose on Feb. 2 in his New York apartment with a syringe in his arm
and packets of drugs nearby.

His narrative upsets the usual heroin junkie stereotype. He wasn't
broke, dirty, undernourished, homeless or a rock star. Instead his
death puts a famous face on a more recent national calamity:
upper-income heroin addicts who started with prescription
painkillers.

Four out of five new heroin users had previously abused painkillers,
according to the 2012 National Survey on Drug Abuse and Health. And as
the number of heroin users increased in recent years, the survey
finds, use of prescription painkillers for non-medical reasons has
declined.

Dr. Sally Satel, a practicing psychiatrist and health policy expert at
the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told me that much of
the recent heroin epidemic can be blamed on simple economics: "Many
users of prescription painkillers find they can get the same effects
from heroin a lot cheaper."

To remedy this new plague, Satel and other experts recommend that more
attention should be paid to treatment programs and doctors who
overprescribe addictive painkillers when less-dangerous drugs will do.
We know from experience, at least, that drug addiction needs to be
treated as a medical matter, not just a criminal matter.

Significantly Hoffman's tragic end comes at a time when states and the
federal government are relaxing their drug laws and turning to
sentencing alternatives to reduce their prison populations, save money
and ease the transition of nonviolent offenders back into society.

A third of U.S. states closed prisons over the past three years,
according to a recent report by the Washington-based Sentencing
Project, while almost two-thirds enacted reforms to reduce the number
of incarcerated.

Hoffman hoped that if he ever died of an overdose, according to his
friend, filmmaker Aaron Sorkin, that it would frighten others away
from heroin. I hope it also frightens us toward remedies that make
sense - and don't just fill prisons.
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