In what is not widely seen as the new “war on drugs”, the war on heroin, continues to rage on across the country. In the state of New York, the senate is scheduled to vote on laws proposed by the Joint Task Force on Heroin and Opioid Addiction.
According to this article in the Union-Sun & Journal, the proposed legislation helped to “address concerns raised by law enforcement, health and mental health experts, victims’ advocates, local residents and other participants.”
Those persons from the aforementioned field voiced their concerns at local forums held throughout the state. The hope is that there will be further prevention of drug related crime, drug dependency and a largest wealth of knowledge and access to treatment for addiction to families and people that need it.
The bills that are proposed are called Laree’s Law, S4163, which will establish a homicide if the opiate is sold and the user’s use ends in death. The law is said to target only those who profit from selling the drug and not those that were “co-users” with the deceased. All across the state of New York and all across the country, more and more deaths are the result of the illegal usage and overdose of heroin with no repercussion.
S4177 lowers the number of people that need to be involved with a drug organization from four to three with a reduction from “$75,000 to $25,000” as the minimum amount of proceeds that the organization has to have from sales of drugs.
S100 allows for a person to be charged if they are apprehended with more than 50 packages of an opiate or similar substance with a worth of $300 plus.
S1901 would allow for the requirement of courts to “consider the underlying charges and a defendant’s propensity for violent conduct when determining the defendant’s eligibility for judicial diversion for alcohol or substance abuse treatment.”
S1640 would affix “synthetic opioids to the list,” which will aid officials with the designer drug epidemic.
S4239B will allow fro that those that are currently in “judicial diverson programs” to be sanctioned into “medically prescribed drug treatment plans.”
S631 helps those that who are a threat to themselves or to others to go to court order outpatient programs for substance use disorder.
S2847 would “require the state health department to assign at least one investigator from the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement to each county within New York City.”
Further forums are scheduled in the coming months so that leaders of the task force can gather more input from those in the field.
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