Free food, warm bed, TV, “interesting” people to talk to, etc. Pretty soon, with all the restrictions and successful lawsuits against assorted treatment, prisons will be places people try to get into instead of stay out of.
Inmates set for ‘cold turkey’ money
Prisoners are poised to win undisclosed pay-outs after suing the [British] Home Office because they were forced to stop taking drugs in jail, it was revealed.
Drugs charity DrugScope said the group of six inmates and former inmates who used heroin and other opiates were on the verge of settling out of court with the Prison Service.
The case – alleging the “cold turkey” withdrawal treatment they were forced to undergo amounted to assault – was scheduled to start at the High Court.
So, is making prisoners go cold turkey without heterosexual intercourse an assault too?!
it is verifiably addictive.
Heroin withdrawal is a nasty, potentially lethal process. They could have been eased down a bit on methadone. You have to remember an addict isn’t in the best of health anyway, and may have other related diseases with impaired liver function or immune deficiencies. Most US jails will get an inmate to a medical facility with withdrawal symptoms because of litigation issues. In fact if anything appears wrong with you they get a medical doctor to sign off on it before incarceration.
Interesting quote “….prisons will be places people try to get into instead of stay out of.”
My wife and I talked about how our retirement cost of living will be so high that prison would allow a better standard of living over living at the poverty level in slums, eating government cheese and powerered milk.
Now-a-days, it seems that there are more benefits and options by breaking the laws then following them.
The people who follow the rules don’t get any rewards above the same basic staples that priconers get.
Heroin withdrawal is uncomfortable but never lethal. Methadone withdrawal is worse because it is more extended – it gets into the bones and withdrawal takes forever. But that’s not lethal either. What’s really lethal, often, is withdrawal from alcohol.
But treatment for heroin withdrawal is cheap and simple and does not have to involve radical steps like whole blood replacement. There’s no good reason not to treat the symptoms during a cold turkey withdrawal.
I get that info from my wife, who was a drug and alcohol counselor until about 10 years ago. So it’s a little old, but I seriously doubt heroin withdrawal has suddenly become lethal in that amount of time.
As I understood, there are only two classes of drugs with potential to kill from cold-turkey withdrawal, Barbituates (pretty out of fashion these days), and alcohol. Heroin is an extremely uncomortable withdrawal, but not fatal.
Lets see..
Being on Disability for 6 years,
I get $700 per month.
retirement and disability are BASED on your last 10 years of work. Then giving you 1/2 of what you were making.
THINK about that…
I was Journeyman wage in retail. Almost $9 per hour.
Jail sounds like a nice warm, comforable, TV, bills paid, no rent, fair food, place to be.
yeah, jail is wonderful. If you like being raped and beaten. I’ll never understand these people who think jail is better than being poor. I’ve been dirt poor and hungry, and I’d take that over jail any day.
Think jail is fun — Go ahead, commit a crime and find out just how WRONG you are.
In canada,
Low risk prisoners, share Apartments.
Yeah, my luck and I’d share an apartment with some huge guy named Bubba that wants to make me his girlfriend.
This is really warping human rights! *sic*
Nanny State.
And there is no goverment cheese anymore. They give it to the states who then give it to the prisons or the illegals. Citizens can’t get it.
Withdrawl isn’t funny. I took huge doses of prednisone for an extended after a transplant (to treat rejection). Coming off that stuff was extremely difficult. I thought for sure I was going to have a heart attack. I held the phone for a few days.
I’ve never been addicted to a recreational drug. But if anything like what I went through, then, yes, going cold turkey is cruel.
Most addictions are recognized as illnesses. For any prison or even medical person to arbitrarily decide which illnesses may be treated is capricious and cruel. While even I don’t propose to go to extremes in providing comfort for prisoners on remand, that also doesn’t mean we need to the other extreme of denying treatment for illnesses.
What most people don’t realize is that when a person is arrested, they are still innocent until proven guilty. I know it is just a “God damn piece of paper” that says they are still innocent, but to many people, we call it the Constitution and the same law that allowed us to arrest the person in the first place, dictates that we will act civilized in our treatment of that person. For if they are undeserving of any rights, then you too are undeserving of the protections afforded by the Constitution.
What does the Constitution and “innocent until proven guilty” have to do with people with drug addictions in jail? Heroin is illegal, so how is it cruel and unusual for the government to deny an addict access to the drug when they are in jail? And to me, replacing one addictive substance with another (like methadone) as “treatment” is just as unconscionable because you aren’t really ridding the body of the chemical addiction. And just because some consensus of doctors calls it an illness doesn’t mean its a constitutional right or obligation to be treated for it while in the government’s custody.
But none of that really matters anyway, since this ridiculous story come from the UK.