U.S. News

Pretty sure they're arguing that charging parents won't help children. We have a fentanyl problem so severe that children are dying at unprecedented rates, because the drug is so deadly is only takes an amount equivalent to the weight of a mosquito to be lethal.

And we are choosing to address that problem, as we have for 40 years, through stricter prison sentencing, which has never improved or otherwise addressed the root causes of addiction. Punishing addicts makes everyone feel better, because...children dying is fucking devastating and we need someone held accountable, and the parents do bear at least some responsibility.

But just because it makes us feel better doesn't mean it is effective.

Detectives testified that when Waite found her daughter unresponsive she rushed to a pharmacy to buy naloxone, a drug used to reverse an opioid overdose. The couple did not call 911 until hours later when Allison started having trouble breathing.

These parents made a pretty disgusting choice, but they did it because they thought they had a chance of keeping their child. If we could set aside our impotent outrage and acknowledge that offering support and oversight to parents in these situations, rather than the heavy hammer of "justice", this little girl might still be alive. Our appetite for vengeance would be unsated, but we would save more children and help people improve their lives.

There are many other things that need doing--many, many things--to make a dent in America's drug epidemic, and headlines like this are frustrating because we keep pulling out the same useless tool.

You know those visual gags about someone about to engage in a duel choosing between an assortment of weapons and they pick something silly like a banana? This is the banana, and the joke is so, so old.

Yes I absolutely am, because it won't help kids any at all. This model we follow where we wait until someone dies and then swoop in, designate someone else to be responsible and then hurt that person as much as possible just doesn't work. In fifty years it has not helped one addict get clean, it hasn't prevented one person becoming an addict, and it hadn't stopped one overdose death. We've doubled down so hard on this that there are people doing life for simple possession of marijuana. If this was a good idea that worked it would have had some measurable impact by now, but the numbers say that things are getting exponentially worse. I've buried 5 close friends and family members due to addiction. I'm sick of doing the same stupid thing over and over again and then when it inevitably doesn't work just doubling down again.