Should Jails be Responsible for Drug Addicts?

Each year, billions of taxpayer dollars are spent on correctional facilities. According to drugwarfacts.com, the FBI reported 1,572,579 arrests for drug possession in 2016. All those arrests cost money and add up to a lot of taxpayer dollars.

But should jails and taxpayers be responsible for dealing with drug addicts? Though jails contain some medical staff they are not healthcare facilities, and this can result in accidents.

There is a common misconception that withdrawals from drugs like heroin and other opiates, while very painful is not fatal. The truth is with no medical attention at all, opiate withdrawals can be dangerous and even fatal. Over the last several years, there have been a handful of people who have died from drug withdrawals in jail.

Some of these are opiate addicts, some are those legitimately on pain medication, and perhaps the most unfortunate are those on medication based treatments like suboxone. The problem is due to inadequately trained staff to deal with the influx of people struggling with opiate abuse.

It is impossible to say exactly how many times this has happened because there is no organization which tracks how many opiate-related deaths occur in jail. However, the news website Mother Jones reported “20 lawsuits filed between 2014 and 2016 alleging that an inmate died from opiate withdrawal complications.”

Why are jails a) the place that needs to handle this and b) if they are why aren’t they better equipped to deal with this situation?

Clearly, no workable solution is in place to address this.