"Taunton heroin death is city’s first since April" by Laura Crimaldi | Globe Staff October 17, 2014
Taunton, where opioid overdoses spiked earlier this year but then plummeted after alarmed city officials took action, on Wednesday recorded its first heroin-related death since April.
The victim was Branden Tribble, 22, according to Tribble’s father and Taunton police. Tribble was pronounced dead at Morton Hospital in Taunton after the authorities received a 911 call at about 11:15 p.m. on Wednesday from a residence on Hodges Street, said Jennifer Bastille, a Police Department crime analyst and community outreach specialist.
Bastille said she does not think Tribble’s death signals a resurgence of the heroin crisis that had gripped the city....
At a low level it's okay. The black profits roll in and bank bottom lines are lubricated.
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Related(?): Saugus Sex Assault
It's an evil drug.
"Drug task force arrests two men in Stoughton" by John R. Ellement | Globe Staff October 17, 2014
Two loaded handguns and thousands of dollars in cash were found inside a Stoughton apartment by members of a law enforcement task force investigating two men suspected of being drug dealers, State Police said.
State Police said in a Web posting Friday that the two men, Patrick Brandao, 22, of Brockton, and Isaiah Teixeira, 29, of Stoughton, were arraigned in Stoughton District Court on Friday on multiple charges, including unlawful possession of a firearm while committing a felony and drug charges.
A task force from the FBI, State Police gang and detective units, and Brockton and Stoughton police participated in the investigation that led to the execution of a search warrant at a residence at 97 Pratts Court on Thursday, State Police said. Inside, authorities said they found a loaded .40-caliber Glock pistol, a loaded 9mm Ruger handgun, suspected heroin, and thousands of dollars in cash. The investigation is ongoing, police said.
The two men are also charged with possession of heroin with intent to distribute in a school zone, illegal possession of ammunition, possession of a large-capacity firearm, and receiving stolen property, State Police said.
Both men pleaded not guilty to all charges in court, according to a spokesman for Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey. Bail was set at $30,000 in cash for Brandao, who was also ordered held without bail for outstanding charges in Brockton courts.
Bail was set at $50,000 in cash for Teixeira, who was ordered held without bail for an outstanding charge in Norfolk Superior Court, according to Morrissey’s office.
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What are we going to do with those kids?
"SJC chief seeks reform in drug cases" by Milton J. Valencia | Globe Staff October 16, 2014
The head of the state’s highest court called for an end to mandatory minimum sentences for low-level drug offenders on Thursday, saying they interfere with judges’ discretion, disproportionately affect minorities, and fail to rehabilitate offenders.
Citing the opioid-addiction crisis, Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Ralph D. Gants said the state needs to find better ways to treat addicts than sending them to jail....
“To those who favor the status quo in the so-called war on drugs, I ask: How well is the status quo working?” Gants said.
Good point.
Gants, selected as chief justice by Governor Deval Patrick, called on the Legislature to pass laws to abolish mandatory sentencing. His remarks, in his first State of the Judiciary speech, were part of a call for broader changes in the court system.
“We need our sentences not merely to punish and deter, but also to provide offenders with the supervision and the tools they will need to maximize the chance of success upon release and minimize the likelihood of recidivism,” he said.
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Gants’s proposal drew quick praise from members of the Massachusetts Bar Association, his audience at the association’s annual Bench-Bar Symposium in the John Adams Courthouse.
Marsha V. Kazarosian, president of the bar association, called Gants’s call to action “a gutsy move.”
She said there are “no cookie-cutter remedies” for drug defendants, and that an offender’s background should taken into consideration, and “that’s exactly what a judge is supposed to do.”
Anthony Benedetti, chief counsel for the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the state’s public defender agency agreed.
“So many people involved in the criminal justice system have substance abuse and mental health issues,” Benedetti said. “That’s the root of the problem, and this gets back to individual, evidence-based sentencing.”
The proposal was criticized by Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett, head of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, who argued that the laws are designed to target drug traffickers, not merely drug users.
“The midst of an opiate overdose epidemic is not the time to make it easier for drug traffickers to avoid accountability and incarceration,” Blodgett said. “An experienced trial judge should know that the drug defendants sentenced to incarceration are the ones who carry and use firearms, who flood communities with poison, and who commit the same distribution offenses over and over again.”
Two years ago, the Legislature reduced some mandatory sentences that were based on the amount and type of drugs sold, and a defendant’s criminal history. It was the first major relaxing of drug laws since the 1980s.
In 2013, 450 Massachusetts defendants were given mandatory sentences for drug offenses. As an example, a defendant convicted of trafficking more than 18 grams of heroin would face a minimum sentence of 3½ years in prison, but a defendant caught with 36 grams would face a minimum of five years.
Gants’s efforts mirror a broader movement nationally to shorten prison terms for drug offenders and do away with sentences that fail to consider a defendant’s background.
It's all about budgets and lack of revenue, not niceness.
In the federal court system, changes to sentencing guidelines for drug defendants that would reduce penalties are set to take effect in November.
And US Attorney General Eric Holder issued a landmark order last year calling on federal prosecutors to move away from charging nonviolent, low-level drug offenders with serious crimes.
Holder also called for clemency for thousands of imprisoned drug offenders.
Related: Obama Puts a Hold on Holder Resignation
Also see: Former Obama lawyer declines attorney general offer
Gants made his announcement Thursday while outlining an aggressive agenda for the state Trial Court system, which includes the criminal courts and civil courts, and specialized courts that oversee housing and family matters....
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About those medical marijuana clinics:
"State public health commissioner to resign; Bartlett leaving for Cape agency" by Kay Lazar | Globe Staff October 14, 2014
Massachusetts Public Health Commissioner Cheryl Bartlett, whose 16-month tenure has been marked by missteps in rolling out the state’s medical marijuana program, is leaving state government to take a job at a Cape Cod health agency.
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Bartlett, a nurse and longtime community health leader, was tapped in June 2013 to head the health department, the third commissioner to lead the troubled state agency in the past two years.
Since 2012, the department has been roiled by an employee’s mishandling of drug evidence at a state lab that jeopardized thousands of criminal cases, and allegations of lax oversight that allowed a deadly fungal meningitis outbreak nationwide that was traced to a Framingham pharmacy.
No one was ever held accountable for over 60 deaths.
Related: Passing on the Joint
Also see: SJC will hear petition to dismiss cases tied to Dookhan
“You know there’s a problem when the guy who is supposed to be in charge has a bag of crack on his desk for no apparent reason.”
It's quite a conundrum.
Bartlett’s announcement came on the same day dozens of protesters gathered outside her office to decry the department’s lack of progress in licensing medical marijuana dispensaries. Since the health department tapped 20 applicants for provisional dispensary licenses in January, the program has been steeped in controversy and no companies have received final clearance to open.
Voters approved a statewide initiative two years ago allowing medical use of marijuana, which directed the health department to license up to 35 dispensaries within one year.
The agency assembled dispensary regulations under a previous commissioner that were widely hailed as a national model. But the process for licensing the dispensaries, under Bartlett’s tenure, has been mired in problems.
Bartlett was criticized earlier this year for her close ties to William Delahunt, the former US representative whose company received three provisional marijuana dispensary licenses. Those licenses were later rescinded amid questions about Delahunt’s friendship with Bartlett and the company’s intention to direct 50 percent of revenues to a for-profit management company. She recused herself from the selection process as concerns mounted, and chose a deputy to oversee licensing.
Bartlett held several leadership positions in the health department before ascending to commissioner.
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NEXT DAY UPDATES:
"Heroin overdose deaths climbing in N.H.; Experts say drug cheaper on street than painkillers" Associated Press October 26, 2014
CONCORD, N.H. — Through the first nine months of this year, the number of heroin overdose deaths in New Hampshire has nearly matched the total for all of 2013. Officials say they need to beef up enforcement efforts and treatment, and consider expanding the use of a drug that can counter overdoses.
The state has recorded 65 heroin overdose deaths so far in 2014, compared with 70 all of last year. There are also at least 70 more suspected heroin deaths this year that haven’t been confirmed by toxicology tests, enough to mean that New Hampshire could see its number of overdose deaths double in a year.
‘‘[Heroin] is pure, it is cheap, and it is available,’’ Public Safety Commissioner John Barthelmes said Friday. ‘‘We do have an epidemic of addiction.’’
Barthelmes said the attack on the heroin scourge needs to be three-pronged: enforcement, prevention, and treatment.
‘‘There’s no magic bullet,’’ he said. ‘‘If we don’t work together, we will fail.’’
Experts, at a meeting Friday of the Governor’s Task Force on Alcohol and Drug Abuse, Prevention, Intervention and Treatment, say much of the spike in heroin addiction is driven by the increased cost and decreased availability of prescription painkillers being sold on the streets....
Another reason the social ill is allowed to fe$ter at a low level: it is brought on by pre$cription pharmaceuticals.
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Also see:
"State Police said they found a stash of heroin worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in a car stopped for traffic violations in Sturbridge. David Morales, 35, of Salem, was stopped for making an unsafe lane change at about 1 p.m. Monday on Interstate 84, State Police said in a posting on their blog. In addition, police said, the windows of Morales’s 2007 Nissan Altima were tinted beyond the legal limit. Troopers searched the car and said they found about four kilograms of a substance believed to be heroin worth about $400,000. Morales was arrested on charges that included trafficking heroin."
