How to Wage a War On Heroin Addiction in PA

Heroin addiction breaks families into tiny pieces in ways most people are lucky enough to ever experience. It breaks down the toughest fathers and the most nurturing mothers. It’s easy to enable an addict without intentionally trying, and it’s just as easy to be wildly manipulated by someone you care about.

 
This is a real problem that’s growing worse by the minute, and so far not much has worked to address and curb the heroin problem in Pennsylvania. The real victims are often the children of addicts, whose lives are endangered by their parents’ heroin addiction. We need more tools to properly wage a war on heroin addiction, particularly when it comes to protecting these children.
 

Here are ten proposals I believe would help stem the tide of heroin addiction in Pennsylvania. I realize some of them are harsh, but if you’ve ever dealt with a heroin addict, you know it often takes a hardline, tough-love approach to break through and see positive results. If elected to the Legislature, I intend to write and pursue aggressive legislation based on these ideas to give law enforcement, schools and families the tools necessary to seriously crack down on heroin addiction.

1. Automatic loss of parental rights for convicted heroin users. Parents convicted of heroin possession who have minor children should automatically have their parental rights terminated for a period of at least six months in order to protect the children, and then the burden should be on the parents to petition the court to get them back by proving they’re actually clean and turning their life around.

2. Expand PFA protection to include children of heroin addicts. We need to amend the Protection From Abuse Act to allow third parties to obtain a PFA on behalf of a minor child who is being neglected due to a parent’s heroin use. Right now there is no quick or easy way to get a child out of a dangerous and abusive situation other than calling CYS. There needs to be a way for extended family members or other selected third parties to have standing to file for a PFA on behalf of a minor child with a parent addicted to heroin, because it’s absolutely abusive behavior.

3. Don’t always just go after the kingpin- go after the users themselves instead of trying to get everyone to be a Confidential Informant for law enforcement. Yes, it’s important to go after the top of the food chain, which in this case is the heroin dealers themselves. But most local police officers know who the users in there are, so let’s get serious about going after them as well as the dealers. And once they’re arrested…

4. No more plea bargaining by district attorneys for heroin charges. We need to stop allowing heroin addicts cut plea bargain deals and wind up back on the streets again right away so they can keep using. Let’s adopt a zero tolerance policy and start tossing more heroin addicts behind bars, if for no other reason than to protect their children. How can we do that?

5. Decriminalize and regulate marijuana. Over 25,000 people are arrested for marijuana possession every year in Pennsylvania, and there is no doubt heroin is far more damaging than marijuana in terms of children being endangered by parental addiction. So let’s get our priorities straight and focus on the addiction we need to focus on. (For the record, I don’t have a horse in this race because I don’t smoke pot. It’s just common sense public policy).

6. Take a serious look at methadone and suboxone clinics. Let’s send some undercover agents into these clinics and see just how easy it is to cheat a urine test to get these drugs, and shut down the clinics who don’t regulate it properly for good. It’s just like sending underage kids into a convenience store to buy cigarettes to make sure the store is carding people, except the stakes are way higher. Too many addicts are either abusing suboxone and methadone or selling it to get more money for heroin, so let’s curb the abuse by tightly regulating the suboxone and methadone clinics.

7. Drug testing for people with a heroin-related criminal history in order to receive public benefits. This is not the same thing as making all welfare recipients take a drug test; it’s acknowledging the recidivism rates for heroin use are sky high and heroin addicts will do just about anything to get their hands on more heroin. Parents who use welfare and food stamps as a means to fuel a heroin addiction are like Third World African Warlords- they intercept well-intended relief and subvert it for their own purposes. If you have a heroin-related criminal history, you should be required to take regular tests for a reasonable amount of time to ensure tax dollars aren’t fueling your habit.

8. Develop a standardized educational and support program for children of heroin addicts. Dealing with a heroin addict is extremely difficult for an adult to do- how can we expect children to handle it on their own? Schools in areas with high addiction rates should have resources provided to children of addicts, without informing the parents for obvious safety reasons. There should be a one-on-one prescreening by professionals who know what to ask kids of suspected addicts and then a larger support group with age-appropriate assistance to help these kids understand the mistakes of their parents, and hopefully avoid them.

9. Certain crimes should have aggravated sentences if they are heroin-related. Addicts have no problem stealing from anyone, including family, to support a heroin addiction. Addicts often endanger the lives of their kids because they’re more concerned about getting high than anything else. We should amend the PA Criminal Code to automatically increase penalties for any crime determined to be heroin-related.

10. Honest public education for the entire community, including adults. Many adults, especially senior citizens, don’t even know what heroin looks like. They don’t know what a stamp bag is. They don’t know what kind of paraphernalia to look out for. They don’t know who to call when they see something, and they’re afraid of retaliation for speaking up to law enforcement. This is both bad and easy to fix. We need to get real about protecting our own communities, and a neighborhood watch makes no sense if you have no idea what to watch for, or if you won’t speak up if you do see it. This education needs to include not just facts about heroin abuse, but information about what signs to look for in a potential addict and how to deal with someone you suspect to be a heroin addict.

There’s no guarantee these proposals would make a difference, but we have to try something before we end up with a whole generation of kids who think having a needle dangling out of their arm is good parenting.  We can see the price we pay for doing nothing, and that price is unacceptably high. We have to do better.