Legislators question medications to help ease withdrawal in dungeons | national

POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. (AP) – Laura Levine said she never smoked a cigarette or touched a drink before the age of 35. The mother of five children then tried the heroine and she was hooked.

After a few legal manipulations – a little larceny to provide for her – she was sent to Nbadau County Jail and the withdrawal began to be felt. As nausea, tremors, and sweating increased, she started begging for help from the guards.

"They sort of laughed and said, 'All will be fine, no one dies of heroin withdrawal,'" said Levine, recovering and now working to help other people struggle opioids. "I would rather give birth to my five children without drugs, rather than undergo a new withdrawal."

More help may be available for people like Levine, as New York lawmakers are considering a move to make drug treatment, such as methadone or suboxone, available to all incarcerated or inmates an opioid addiction.

States across the country are considering similar approaches in research showing that drugs, combined with behavioral therapy, can help addicts reduce withdrawal symptoms and cravings that cause many people to relapse.

Federal statistics suggest that more than half of the inmates of state prisons in the country have a substance abuse problem. New York officials say the figure could rise to 80 percent in state and local jails, which at any one time have about 77,000 inmates.

Drug policy experts point to the success of a similar program in Rhode Island, which has seen a sharp drop in the number of former inmates who died from an overdose, from 26 in 2016 at nine last year.

Other successes have been reported in Louisville, Kentucky jails; Sacramento, California and Mbadachusetts.

"It makes no sense that people with a public health problem do not have access to medicines," said Jasmine Budnella, drug policy coordinator at VOCAL-NY, a group that defends the interests of low-income New Yorkers, including criminal justice, drug policy and homelessness. "In the United States, we are talking about human rights but we are literally torturing them."

Two years ago, Matt Herring, 24, died of a drug overdose after years of battling drug addiction and twists in correctional facilities. His mother, Patricia Herring, said Matt had already tried to put Suboxone in jail in order to avoid the horrors of the withdrawal. The guards found the medicine and took it away.

Patricia Herring has now become a self-described "missionary mother" calling for more resources for the treatment of substance abuse in correctional facilities.

"If she had been given medication when she came in, I do not know, maybe things would have been different," she said.

In the absence of organized opposition, the debate about support for medical treatment in correctional facilities comes down to dollars and cents. Some counties have paid for programs in their prisons; others do not have it. For example, in New York City, six state centers and local jails have drug-badistance programs limited to opioid addicts.

Albany County has become the first state county outside of New York City to offer drug-badisted treatment. Sheriff Craig Apple said that he had become a believer.

"It took me a while to get there, but we are already seeing rapid success," he said.

A draft state budget presented by Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo would spend $ 3.75 million to expand access to county jails and use more than a million dollars to expand its use in state prisons. Democratic leaders of the state legislature have been demanding more, and advocates have said they want to see at least $ 7 million in the annual budget.

A spokesman for the Cuomo Budget Office defended the amount of funding proposed by the governor, saying it was part of a more holistic and "holistic" approach to combating opioid addiction.

"The Medication-Assisted Treatment Program is just one component of opioid addiction relief, led by the state of New York and endowed with $ 200 million, which puts into effect effective solutions to save lives, "spokesman Freeman Klopott said.

A decision is expected before April 1, when the new budget is due.

"Drug addiction is a disease," said Linda Rosenthal, a member of the New York Parliament, a Democrat from Manhattan who is sponsoring drug treatment legislation. "We should treat it like a disease."