The USA FLIP

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“Dedicated to all the beautiful children
captured by addiction in the U.S. They
were victims of Purdue Pharma; the
Sackler family; the FDA; doctors; dentists,
hospitals; Pharma and politicians. May our
angels rest in Heaven. They are free, now.
Never again.” – Carol Egan
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MISSION STATEMENT
To Flip The Discrimination of the
criminal justice approach to substance
misuse towards a proven public health
solution. We are dedicated to drug
proofing our communities.
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Do the Portugal Flip! That became the mantra the moment we returned from
our visit to the country that we knew held the answers to the opioid epidemic.
Co-Founder Carol Egan and others from the grassroots opioid advocacy group,
Purdue Watchdogs, put aside their domestic outreach in August 2019 and went
on a learning mission heading straight to the authorities. The group interviewed
police, healthcare officials and local leaders, participated in ride-a-longs and
street walks to areas within Lisbon where drug users recovering and nonrecovering
were dealt large doses of compassion and guidance for living an
improved life, all without judgement.
They spent 10 days learning how the data truly illustrated such a reduction in
overdoses by heroin users. They learned how jail time was eliminated and
recovery programs added. And they knew they had found the answer. Portugal
decreased their drug overdose deaths by 90% in 6 years - from 369 in 1999 to
12 in 2006. Michigan is the same size and had over 2000 deaths last year.
Portugal had 34.
Once back on U.S. soil, the group took their knowledge to their enormous
networks - members of Purdue Watchdogs, moms and dads of children who
had received their angel wings from the unforgiving and cruel opioid epidemic,
the fast-growing followers on social media and, even, The Pharmacist, the man
from the Netflix documentary that took the world by storm.
We encourage you to contact your legislators and share what Portugal has been
successfully doing - focusing on drug dealers instead of drug users for arrests
and jailing. It is within these pages of this USA Flip book that we share the
philosophy behind changing the mindset and reversing how drug users are dealt
with. The idea of immediate care from a team of professionals who confront
the user with a compassionate plan of recovery and help guide rather than jail
the user and leave him/her to their own devices upon release.
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(Continued)
We invite you to read each page. Really read and envision yourself becoming a
voice, as well. A voice for advocacy. A voice for legislation that will bring the
Portugal model to the U.S. This book is chock full of colorful graphs with
meaningful data, anecdotes from successful team members who are behind
recovery and ways you, too, can help within the schools to help prevent our
most vulnerable, children, from becoming victims of a drug-using community.
Included are ways to help end the opioid epidemic and drug proof your
community. Fool-proof ways that have been applied to communities in New
Jersey in addition to countries like Portugal. And we also want to encourage for
proper training for medical staff – including physicians.
We hope you will find value in this book and reach out to us to become part of
our framework. Every voice counts, as does every experience.
Please let us know your thoughts once you have finished reading by
commenting or privately messaging us on our Facebook page: The Global
Recovery Movement.
Thank you for being a part of the solution,
The Global Recovery Movement Founders &
The Purdue Watchdogs Founders:
Carol Egan - New Jersey, Georgia
Donna Mazurek - Michigan
Elba Guzman - Puerto Rico
Fernando Alvarez - Connecticut
Cindy Dodds - Florida
Lou-Riva Filler - New Jersey
Jennifer Healy - Massachusetts
Robert Legge - Virginia
Dan Schneider - The Pharmacist, LA
John Shinholser - Virginia
Andrea Wright - Virginia
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Intentionally left blank
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We have come a long way in a year. This was 2018.
Purdue has gone bankrupt. Billions will be paid in settlements.
Hopefully some Sackler's will go to jail.
We all did this! Now let's fix this!! Do The Portugal Flip!
Sign into tunnelofhope.org
and join the Pharmacist's People's Lobby.
We can NOT do it without your name on the list!
72,000 young American children were buried this year.
Sign in please!
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10 Million
Population Each!
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USA Drug Related Deaths
1999 - 2021
866,047
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“HISTORY OF THE PORTUGAL MODEL”
Since it decriminalized all drugs in 2001, Portugal has seen dramatic drops in
overdoses, HIV infection and drug-related crime. By Susana Ferreira
When the drugs came, they hit all at once. It was the 80s, and by the time one in
10 people had slipped into the depths of heroin use – bankers, university
students, carpenters, socialites, miners – Portugal was in a state of panic.
Álvaro Pereira was working as a family doctor in Olhão in southern Portugal.
“People were injecting themselves in the street, in public squares, in gardens,” he
told me. “At that time, not a day passed when there wasn’t a robbery at a local
business, or a mugging.”
The crisis began in the south. The 80s were a prosperous time in Olhão, a fishing
town 31 miles west of the Spanish border. Coastal waters filled fishermen’s nets
from the Gulf of Cádiz to Morocco, tourism was growing, and currency flowed
throughout the southern Algarve region. But by the end of the decade, heroin
began washing up on Olhão’s shores. Overnight, Pereira’s beloved slice of the
Algarve coast became one of the drug capitals of Europe: one in every 100
Portuguese was battling a problematic heroin addiction at that time, but the
number was even higher in the south. Headlines in the local press raised the
alarm about overdose deaths and rising crime. The rate of HIV infection in
Portugal became the highest in the European Union. Pereira recalled desperate
patients and families beating a path to his door, terrified, bewildered, begging for
help. “I got involved,” he said, “only because I was ignorant.”
In truth, there was a lot of ignorance back then. Forty years of authoritarian rule
under the regime established by António Salazar in 1933 had suppressed
education, weakened institutions and lowered the school-leaving age, in a
strategy intended to keep the population docile. The country was closed to the
outside world; people missed out on the experimentation and mind-expanding
culture of the 1960s. When the regime ended abruptly in a military coup in 1974,
Portugal was suddenly opened to new markets and influences. Under the old
regime, Coca-Cola.
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was banned and owning a cigarette lighter required a license. When marijuana
and then heroin began flooding in, the country was utterly unprepared.
(Continued)
Pereira tackled the growing wave of addiction the only way he knew how: one
patient at a time. A student in her 20s who still lived with her parents might have
her family involved in her recovery; a middle-aged man, estranged from his wife
and living on the street, faced different risks and needed a different kind of
support. Pereira improvised, calling on institutions and individuals in the
community to lend a hand.
In 2001, nearly two decades into Pereira’s accidental specialization in addiction,
Portugal became the first country to decriminalize the possession and
consumption of all illicit substances. Rather than being arrested, those caught
with a personal supply might be given a warning, a small fine, or told to appear
before a local commission – a doctor, a lawyer and a social worker – about
treatment, harm reduction, and the support services that were available to them.
The opioid crisis soon stabilized, and the ensuing years saw dramatic drops in
problematic drug use, HIV and hepatitis infection rates, overdose deaths, drugrelated
crime and incarceration rates. HIV infection plummeted from an all-time
high in 2000 of 104.2 new cases per million to 4.2 cases per million in 2015. The
data behind these changes has been studied and cited as evidence by harmreduction
movements around the globe. It’s misleading, however, to credit these
positive results entirely to a change in law.
Portugal’s remarkable recovery, and the fact that it has held steady through
several changes in government – including conservative leaders who would have
preferred to return to the US-style war on drugs – could not have happened
without an enormous cultural shift, and a change in how the country viewed
drugs, addiction – and itself. In many ways, the law was merely a reflection of
transformations that were already happening in clinics, in pharmacies and around
kitchen tables across the country. The official policy of decriminalization made it
far easier for a broad range of
services (health, psychiatry, employment, housing etc) that had been
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struggling to pool their resources and expertise, to work together more
effectively to serve their communities.
(Continued)
The language began to shift, too. Those who had been referred to sneeringly as
drogados (junkies) – became known more broadly, more sympathetically, and
more accurately, as “people who use drugs” or “people with addiction disorders”.
This, too, was crucial.
It is important to note that Portugal stabilized its opioid crisis, but it didn’t make it
disappear. While drug-related death, incarceration and infection rates
plummeted, the country still had to deal with the health complications of longterm
problematic drug use. Diseases including hepatitis C, cirrhosis and liver
cancer are a burden on a health system that is still struggling to recover from
recession and cutbacks. In this way, Portugal’s story serves as a warning of
challenges yet to come.
Despite enthusiastic international reactions to Portugal’s success, local harmreduction
advocates have been frustrated by what they see as stagnation and
inaction since decriminalization came into effect. They criticize the state for
dragging its feet on establishing supervised injection sites and drug consumption
facilities; for failing to make the anti-overdose medication naloxone more readily
available; for not implementing needle-exchange programs in prisons. Where,
they ask, is the courageous spirit and bold leadership that pushed the country to
decriminalize drugs in the first place?
In the early days of Portugal’s panic, when Pereira’s beloved Olhão began falling
apart in front of him, the state’s first instinct was to attack. Drugs were
denounced as evil, drug users were demonized, and proximity to either was
criminally and spiritually punishable. The Portuguese government launched a
series of national anti-drug campaigns that were less “Just Say No” and more
“Drugs Are Satan”.
Informal treatment approaches and experiments were rushed into use
throughout the country, as doctors, psychiatrists, and pharmacists worked
independently to deal with the flood of drug-dependency disorders at their
doors, sometimes risking ostracism or arrest to do what they believed was best
for their patients.
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(Continued)
In 1977, in the north of the country, psychiatrist Eduíno Lopes pioneered a
methadone program at the Centro da Boavista in Porto. Lopes was the first
doctor in continental Europe to experiment with substitution therapy, flying in
methadone powder from Boston, under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice,
rather than the Ministry of Health. His efforts met with a vicious public backlash
and the disapproval of his peers, who considered methadone therapy nothing
more than state-sponsored drug addiction.
In Lisbon, Odette Ferreira, an experienced pharmacist and pioneering HIV
researcher, started an unofficial needle-exchange program to address the growing
Aids crisis. She received death threats from drug dealers, and legal threats from
politicians. Ferreira – who is now in her 90s, and still has enough swagger to carry
off long fake eyelashes and red leather at a midday meeting – started giving away
clean syringes in the middle of Europe’s biggest open-air drug market, in the Casal
Ventoso neighborhood of Lisbon. She collected donations of clothing, soap,
razors, condoms, fruit and sandwiches, and distributed them to users. When
dealers reacted with hostility, she snapped back: “Don’t mess with me. You do
your job, and I’ll do mine.” She then bullied the Portuguese Association of
Pharmacies into running the country’s – and indeed the world’s – first national
needle-exchange program.
A flurry of expensive private clinics and free, faith-based facilities emerged,
promising detoxes and miracle cures, but the first public drug-treatment canter
run by the Ministry of Health – the Centro das Taipas in Lisbon – did not begin
operating until 1987. Strapped for resources in Olhão, Pereira sent a few patients
for treatment, although he did not agree with the abstinence-based approach
used at Taipas. “First you take away the drug, and then, with psychotherapy, you
plug up the crack,” said Pereira. There was no scientific evidence to show that this
would work – and it didn’t.
He also sent patients to Lopes’s methadone program in Porto, and found that
some responded well. But Porto was at the other end of the country. He wanted
to try methadone for his patients, but the Ministry of Health hadn’t yet approved
it for use. To get around that, Pereira sometimes asked a nurse to sneak
methadone to him in the boot of his car.
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(Continued)
Pereira’s work treating patients for addiction eventually caught the attention of
the Ministry of Health. “They heard there was a crazy man in the Algarve who
was working on his own,” he said, with a slow smile. Now 68, he is sprightly and
charming, with an athletic build, thick and wavy white hair that bounces when he
walks, a gravelly drawl and a bottomless reserve of warmth. “They came down to
find me at the clinic and proposed that I open a treatment center,” he said. He
invited a colleague from at a family practice in the next town over to join him – a
young local doctor named João Goulão.
Goulão was a 20-year-old medical student when he was offered his first hit of
heroin. He declined because he didn’t know what it was. By the time he finished
school, got his license and began practicing medicine at a health center in the
southern city of Faro, it was everywhere. Like Pereira, he accidentally ended up
specializing in treating drug addiction.
The two young colleagues joined forces to open southern Portugal’s first CAT in
1988. (These kinds of centres have used different names and acronyms over the
years, but are still commonly referred to as Centros de Atendimento a
Toxicodependentes, or CATs.) Local residents were vehemently opposed, and the
doctors were improvising treatments as they went along. The following month,
Pereira and Goulão opened a second CAT in Olhão, and other family doctors
opened more in the north and central regions, forming a loose network. It had
become clear to a growing number of practitioners that the most effective
response to addiction had to be personal, and rooted in communities. Treatment
was still small-scale, local and largely ad hoc.
The first official call to change Portugal’s drug laws came from Rui Pereira, a
former constitutional court judge who undertook an overhaul of the penal code
in 1996. He found the practice of jailing people for taking drugs to be
counterproductive and unethical. “My thought right off the bat was that it wasn’t
legitimate for the state to punish users,” he told me in his office at the University
of Lisbon’s school of law. At that time, about half of the people in prison were
there for drug-related reasons, and the epidemic, he said, was thought to be “an
irresolvable problem”. He recommended that
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(Continued)
drug use be discouraged without imposing penalties, or further alienating users.
His proposals weren’t immediately adopted, but they did not go unnoticed.
In 1997, after 10 years of running the CAT in Faro, Goulão was invited to help
design and lead a national drug strategy. He assembled a team of experts to study
potential solutions to Portugal’s drug problem. The resulting recommendations,
including the full decriminalization of drug use, were presented in 1999, approved
by the council of ministers in 2000, and a new national plan of action came into
effect in 2001.
Today, Goulão is Portugal’s drug czar. He has been the lodestar throughout eight
alternating conservative and progressive administrations; through heated
standoffs with lawmakers and lobbyists; through shifts in scientific understanding
of addiction and in cultural tolerance for drug use; through austerity cuts, and
through a global policy climate that only very recently became slightly less hostile.
Goulão is also decriminalization's busiest global ambassador. He travels almost
non-stop, invited again and again to present the successes of Portugal’s harmreduction
experiment to authorities around the world, from Norway to Brazil,
which are dealing with desperate situations in their own countries.
“These social movements take time,” Goulão told me. “The fact that this
happened across the board in a conservative society such as ours had some
impact.” If the heroin epidemic had affected only Portugal’s lower classes or
racialized minorities, and not the middle or upper classes, he doubts the
conversation around drugs, addiction and harm reduction would have taken
shape in the same way. “There was a point when you could not find a single
Portuguese family that wasn’t affected. Every family had their addict, or addicts.
This was universal in a way that the society felt: ‘We have to do something.’”
Portugal’s policy rests on three pillars: one, that there’s no such thing as a soft or
hard drug, only healthy and unhealthy relationships with drugs; two, that an
individual’s unhealthy relationship with drugs often conceals frayed relationships
with loved ones, with the world around them, and with themselves; and three,
that the eradication of all drugs is an impossible goal.
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(Continued)
“The national policy is to treat each individual differently,” Goulão told me. “The
secret is for us to be present.”
A drop-in center called IN-Mouraria sits unobtrusively in a lively, rapidly
gentrifying neighborhoods of Lisbon, a longtime enclave of marginalized
communities. From 2pm to 4pm, the center provides services to undocumented
migrants and refugees; from 5pm to 8pm, they open their doors to drug users. A
staff of psychologists, doctors and peer support workers (themselves former drug
users) offer clean needles, pre-cut squares of foil, crack kits, sandwiches, coffee,
clean clothing, toiletries, rapid HIV testing, and consultations – all free and
anonymous.
On the day I visited, young people stood around waiting for HIV test results while
others played cards, complained about police harassment, tried on outfits, traded
advice on living situations, watched movies and gave pep talks to one another.
They varied in age, religion, ethnicity and gender identity, and came from all over
the country and all over the world. When a slender, older man emerged from the
bathroom, unrecognizable after having shaved his beard off, an energetic young
man who had been flipping through magazines threw up his arms and cheered.
He then turned to a quiet man sitting on my other side, his beard lush and dark
hair curling from under his cap, and said: “What about you? Why don’t you go
shave off that beard? You can’t give up on yourself, man. That’s when it’s all over.”
The bearded man cracked a smile.
During my visits over the course of a month, I got to know some of the peer
support workers, including João, a compact man with blue eyes who was rigorous
in going over the details and nuances of what I was learning. João wanted to be
sure I understood their role at the drop-in center was not to force anyone to stop
using, but to help minimize the risks users were exposed to.
“Our objective is not to steer people to treatment – they have to want it,” he told
me. But even when they do want to stop using, he continued, having support
workers accompany them to appointments and treatment facilities
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(Continued)
can feel like a burden on the user – and if the treatment doesn’t go well, there is
the risk that that person will feel too ashamed to return to the drop-in canter.
“Then we lose them, and that’s not what we want to do,” João said. “I want them
to come back when they relapse.” Failure was part of the treatment process, he
told me. And he would know.
João is a marijuana-legalization activist, open about being HIV-positive, and after
being absent for part of his son’s youth, he is delighting in his new role as a
grandfather. He had stopped doing speedballs (mixtures of cocaine and opiates)
after several painful, failed treatment attempts, each more destructive than the
last. He long used cannabis as a form of therapy – methadone did not work for
him, nor did any of the inpatient treatment programs he tried – but the cruel
hypocrisy of decriminalization meant that although smoking weed was not a
criminal offence, purchasing it was. His last and worst relapse came when he
went to buy marijuana from his usual dealer and was told: “I don’t have that right
now, but I do have some good cocaine.” João said no thanks and drove away, but
soon found himself heading to a cash machine, and then back to the dealer. After
this relapse, he embarked on a new relationship, and started his own business. At
one point he had more than 30 employees. Then the financial crisis hit. “Clients
weren’t paying, and creditors started knocking on my door,” he told me. “Within
six months I had burned through everything I had built up over four or five years.”
In the mornings, I followed the center's street teams out to the fringes of hi-vis
vests they wear on their shifts – who worked with Crescer na Maior, a harmreduction
NGO. Six times a week, they loaded up a large white van with drinking
water, wet wipes, gloves, boxes of tinfoil and piles of state-issued drug kits: green
plastic pouches with single-use servings of filtered water, citric acid, a small metal
tray for cooking, gauze, filter and a clean syringe. Portugal does not yet have any
supervised injection sites (although there is legislation to allow them, several
attempts to open one have come to nothing), so, Raquel and Sareia told me, they
go out to the open-air sites where they know people go to buy and use. Both are
trained”.
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(Continued)
psychologists, but out in the streets they are known simply as the “needle girls”.
“Good afternoon!” Raquel called out cheerily, as we walked across a seemingly
abandoned lot in an area called Cruz Vermelha. “Street team!” People
materialized from their hiding places like some strange version of whack-a-mole,
poking their heads out from the holes in the wall where they had gone to smoke
or shoot up. “My needle girls,” one woman cooed to them tenderly. “How are
you, my loves?” Most made polite conversation, updating the workers on their
health struggles, love lives, immigration woes or housing needs. One woman told
them she would be going back to Angola to deal with her mother’s estate, that
she was looking forward to the change of scenery. Another man told them he had
managed to get his online girlfriend’s visa approved for a visit. “Does she know
you’re still using?” Sareia asked. The man looked sheepish.
“I start methadone tomorrow,” another man said proudly. He was accompanied
by his beaming girlfriend, and waved a warm goodbye to the girls as they handed
him a square of foil.
In the foggy northern city of Porto, peer support workers from Caso – an
association run by and for drug users and former users, the only one of its kind in
Portugal – meet every week at a noisy cafe. They come here every Tuesday
morning to down espressos, fresh pastries and toasted sandwiches, and to talk
out the challenges, debate drug policy (which, a decade and a half after the law
came into effect, was still confusing for many) and argue, with the warm
rowdiness that is characteristic of people in the northern region. When I asked
them what they thought of Portugal’s move to treat drug users as sick people in
need of help, rather than as criminals, they scoffed. “Sick? We don’t say ‘sick’ up
here. We’re not sick.”
I was told this again and again in the north: thinking of drug addiction simply in
terms of health and disease was too reductive. Some people are able to use drugs
for years without any major disruption to their personal or professional
relationships. It only became a problem, they told me, when it became a
problem.
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(Continued)
Caso was supported by Apdes, a development NGO with a focus on harm
reduction and empowerment, including programs geared toward recreational
users. Their award-winning Check!n project has for years set up shop at festivals,
bars and parties to test substances for dangers. I was told more than once that if
drugs were legalized, not just decriminalized, then these substances would be
held to the same rigorous quality and safety standards as food, drink and
medication.
In spite of Portugal’s tangible results, other countries have been reluctant to
follow. The Portuguese began seriously considering decriminalization in 1998,
immediately following the first UN General Assembly Special Session on the
Global Drug Problem (UNgass). High-level UNgass meetings are convened every
10 years to set drug policy for all member states, addressing trends in addiction,
infection, money laundering, trafficking and cartel violence. At the first session –
for which the slogan was “A drug-free world: we can do it” – Latin American
member states pressed for a radical rethinking of the war on drugs, but every
effort to examine alternative models (such as decriminalization) was blocked. By
the time of the next session, in 2008, worldwide drug use and violence related to
the drug trade had vastly increased. An extraordinary session was held last year,
but it was largely a disappointment – the outcome document didn’t mention
“harm reduction” once.
Despite that letdown, 2016 produced a number of promising other
developments: Chile and Australia opened their first medical cannabis clubs;
following the lead of several others, four more US states introduced medical
cannabis, and four more legalized recreational cannabis; Denmark opened the
world’s largest drug consumption facility, and France opened its first; South Africa
proposed legalizing medical cannabis; Canada outlined a plan to legalize
recreational cannabis nationally and to open more supervised injection sites; and
Ghana announced it would decriminalize all personal drug use.
The biggest change in global attitudes and policy has been the momentum behind
cannabis legalization. Local activists have pressed Goulão to take a stance on
regulating cannabis and legalizing its sale in Portugal; for years,
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he has responded that the time wasn’t right. Legalizing a single substance would
call into question the foundation of Portugal’s drug and harm-reduction
philosophy. If the drugs aren’t the problem, if the problem is the relationship with
drugs, if there’s no such thing as a hard or a soft drug, and if all illicit substances
are to be treated equally, he argued, then shouldn’t all drugs be legalized and
regulated?
Massive international cultural shifts in thinking about drugs and addiction are
needed to make way for decriminalization and legalization globally. In the US, the
White House has remained reluctant to address what drug policy reform
advocates have termed an “addiction to punishment”. But if conservative,
isolationist, Catholic Portugal could transform into a country where same-sex
marriage and abortion are legal, and where drug use is decriminalized, a broader
shift in attitudes seems possible elsewhere. But, as the harm-reduction adage
goes: one has to want the change in order to make it.
When Pereira first opened the CAT in Olhão, he faced vociferous opposition from
residents; they worried that with more drogados would come more crime. But
the opposite happened. Months later, one neighbor came to ask Pereira’s
forgiveness. She hadn’t realized it at the time, but there had been three drug
dealers on her street; when their local clientele stopped buying, they packed up
and left.
The CAT building itself is a drab, brown two-story block, with offices upstairs and
an open waiting area, bathrooms, storage and clinics down below. The doors
open at 8.30am, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Patients wander in
throughout the day for appointments, to chat, to kill time, to wash, or to pick up
their weekly supply of methadone doses. They tried to close the CAT for
Christmas Day one year, but patients asked that it stay open. For some, estranged
from loved ones and adrift from any version of home, this is the closest thing
they’ve got to community and normality.
“It’s not just about administering methadone,” Pereira told me. “You have to
maintain a relationship.”
(Continued)
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In a back room, rows of little canisters with banana-flavored methadone doses
were lined up, each labelled with a patient’s name and information. The Olhão
CAT regularly services about 400 people, but that number can double during the
summer months, when seasonal workers and tourists come to town. Anyone
receiving treatment elsewhere in the country, or even outside Portugal, can have
their prescription sent over to the CAT, making the Algarve an ideal harmreduction
holiday destination.
After lunch at a restaurant owned by a former CAT employee, the doctor took me
to visit another of his projects – a particular favorite. His decades of working with
addiction disorders had taught him some lessons, and he poured his accumulated
knowledge into designing a special treatment facility on the outskirts of Olhão:
the Unidade de Desabituação, or Dishabituation Centre. Several such UDs, as they
are known, have opened in other regions of the country, but this center was
developed to cater to the particular circumstances and needs of the south.
Pereira stepped down as director some years ago, but his replacement asked him
to stay on to help with day-to-day operations. Pereira should be retired by now –
indeed, he tried to – but Portugal is suffering from an overall shortage of health
professionals in the public system, and not enough young doctors are stepping
into this specialization. As his colleagues elsewhere in the country grow closer to
their own retirements, there’s a growing sense of dread that there is no one to
replace them.
“Those of us from the Algarve always had a bit of a different attitude from our
colleagues up north,” Pereira told me. “I don’t treat patients. They treat
themselves. My function is to help them to make the changes they need to
make.”
And thank goodness there is only one change to make, he deadpanned as we
pulled into the centre’s parking lot: “You need to change almost everything.” He
cackled at his own joke and stepped out of his car.
The glass doors at the entrance slid open to a facility that was bright and clean
without feeling overwhelmingly institutional. Doctors’ and
(Continued)
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(Continued)
administrators’ offices were up a sweeping staircase ahead. Women at the front
desk nodded their hellos, and Pereira greeted them warmly: “Good afternoon, my
darlings.”
The Olhão centre was built for just under €3m (£2.6m), publicly funded, and
opened to its first patients nine years ago. This facility, like the others, is
connected to a web of health and social rehabilitation services. It can house up to
14 people at once: treatments are free, available on referral from a doctor or
therapist, and normally last between eight and 14 days. When people first arrive,
they put all of their personal belongings – photos, mobile phones, everything –
into storage, retrievable on departure.
The Olhão centre was built for just under €3m (£2.6m), publicly funded, and
opened to its first patients nine years ago. This facility, like the others, is
connected to a web of health and social rehabilitation services. It can house up to
14 people at once: treatments are free, available on referral from a doctor or
therapist, and normally last between eight and 14 days. When people first arrive,
they put all of their personal belongings – photos, mobile phones, everything –
into storage, retrievable on departure.
“We believe in the old maxim: ‘No news is good news,’” explained Pereira. “We
don’t do this to punish them but to protect them.” Memories can be triggering,
and sometimes families, friends and toxic relationships can be enabling.
To the left there were intake rooms and a padded isolation room, with clunky
security cameras propped up in every corner. Patients each had their own suites –
simple, comfortable and private. To the right, there was a “colour” room, with a
pottery wheel, recycled plastic bottles, paints, egg cartons, glitter and other craft
supplies. In another room, coloured pencils and easels for drawing. A kiln, and
next to it a collection of excellent handmade ashtrays. Many patients remained
heavy smokers.
Patients were always occupied, always using their hands or their bodies or their
senses, doing exercise or making art, always filling their time with something.
“We’d often hear our patients use the expression ‘me and my body’,” Pereira said.
“As though there was a dissociation between the ‘me’ and ‘my flesh’.”
22

To help bring the body back, there was a small gym, exercise classes,
physiotherapy and a Jacuzzi. And after so much destructive behavior – messing up
their bodies, their relationships, their lives and communities – learning that they
could create good and beautiful things was sometimes transformational.
“You know those lines on a running track?” Pereira asked me. He believed that
everyone – however imperfect – was capable of finding their own way, given the
right support. “Our love is like those lines.”
He was firm, he said, but never punished or judged his patients for their relapses
or failures. Patients were free to leave at any time, and they were welcome to
return if they needed, even if it was more than a dozen times.
He offered no magic wand or one-size-fits-all solution, just this daily search for
balance: getting up, having breakfast, making art, taking meds, doing exercise,
going to work, going to school, going into the world, going forward. Being alive,
he said to me more than once, can be very complicated.
“My darling,” he told me, “it’s like I always say: I may be a doctor, but nobody’s
perfect.”
(Continued)
www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radical-drugs-policy-is-working
23

FACT FINDING TRIP TO PORTUGAL
TO LEARN THE PORTUGAL
LOVE SONG. AUGUST 2019
24

25

Rockefeller Drug Laws
HISTORY OF OUR TOUGH ON CRIME LAWS!!
THE RICHEST OF RICH DID THIS TO GET ELECTED
GOVERNOR - NELSON ROCKEFELLER 1973 - ONE
HALF CUP AND YOUR LIFE WAS RUINED.
15 years to 25 year or life for possession of 1/2
cup of drugs. Under the Rockefeller drug laws, the
penalty for selling two ounces (57 g) or more of
heroin, morphine, "raw or prepared opium",
cocaine, or cannabis or possessing four ounces
(113 g) or more of the same substances, was a
minimum of 15 years to life in prison, and a
maximum of 25 years to life in prison. The original
legislation also mandated the same penalty for
committing a violent crime while under the
influence of the same drugs, but this provision
was subsequently omitted from the bill and was
not part of the legislation Rockefeller ultimately
signed. The section of the laws applying to
marijuana was repealed in 1977, under the
Democratic Governor Hugh Carey.
26

The Rockefeller Drug Laws are the statutes dealing with the sale
and possession of "narcotic" drugs in the New York State Penal Law.
The laws are named after Nelson Rockefeller, who was the
state's governor at the time the laws were adopted. Rockefeller had
previously backed drug rehabilitation, job training and housing as
strategies, having seen drugs as a social problem rather than a
criminal one, but did an about-face during a period of mounting
national anxiety about drug use and crime.[1] Rockefeller, a staunch
supporter of the bill containing the laws, had Presidential ambitions
and so wanted to raise his national posture by being "tough on
crime. If this strategy worked, he would no longer be seen as too
liberal to be elected. He signed it on May 8, 1973.
Under the Rockefeller drug laws, the penalty for selling
two ounces (57 g) or more of heroin, morphine, "raw or
prepared opium", cocaine, or cannabis or possessing four ounces
(113 g) or more of the same substances, was a minimum of 15 years
to life in prison, and a maximum of 25 years to life in prison. The
original legislation also mandated the same penalty for committing a
violent crime while under the influence of the same drugs, but this
provision was subsequently omitted from the bill and was not part of
the legislation Rockefeller ultimately signed. The section of the laws
applying to marijuana was repealed in 1977, under
the Democratic Governor Hugh Carey.
The adoption of the Rockefeller drug laws gave New York State the
distinction of having the most severe laws of this kind in the entire
United States—an approach soon imitated by the state of Michigan,
which, in 1978, enacted a "650-Lifer Law", which called for life
imprisonment, without the possibility of parole for the sale,
manufacture, or possession of at least 650 grams (1.43 lb) of cocaine
or any Schedule I or Schedule II opiate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Drug_Laws
27

Intentionally left blank
Global Recovery Movement Email: info@grmovement.net

Reform Works
Drug Overdose Deaths / One Per Million People
29

30

Here’s an idea about how to fix the mental health problem. When people get caught
exhibiting symptoms of mental illness, just arrest them and jail them at least for a
little while so they'll never forget. Upon release, if they show signs of a relapse, jail
them again (some just need the repeated threat of jail to get them to straighten out).
Once they get out, make sure they have a lifetime felony record. Make sure they
know that they are not one of us by taking away their voting rights and ability to own
a firearm. But, that's not enough to stop them from being mentally ill. Threats and
shame are what work best. So, let's make sure their record is public knowledge and
anyone that doesn't want to take a chance on someone who might have been
diagnosed as mentally ill even decades before can use that knowledge to refuse to
rent to them, give them a job or even refuse to give them a license they are
otherwise well qualified for such as an auctioneer, manicurist, barber or tattoo artist.
Yes, all of this is a recipe for a pretty lousy life and often that repeats to the next
generation. But, how else are we going to get them to change their ways?
Of course, what we outlined above would be a terrible idea. The best hope for
recovery from mental illness comes from access to voluntary mental health
treatment and services that are comprehensive, community-based and recoveryoriented
as stated in this policy:
Mental Health America (MHA) believes that effective protection of human rights and
the best hope for recovery from mental illness comes from access to voluntary
mental health treatment and services that are comprehensive, community-based,
recovery-oriented and culturally and linguistically competent. It is essential that the
rights of persons with mental health conditions to make decisions concerning their
treatment be respected. MHA urges states to adopt laws that reflect the paramount
value of maximizing the dignity, autonomy and self-determination of persons affected
by mental health conditions. Voluntary admissions to treatment and services should
be made more truly voluntary, and the use of advance directives should be
implemented.
31

(Continued)
The trauma endured by drug users placed in the criminal justice system goes
beyond imprisonment. The lack of rehab services. The inability to obtain Suboxone
to continue recovery if they are imprisoned in the midst of recovery. The loss of
one’s children including newborn babies. The entire family suffers. Grandparents
may be forced to step in to care for grandchildren to avoid the foster care system.
Some children are not so lucky. They do get turned over to Child Protection Services
when a parent or both are imprisoned for possession of drugs. Once they serve
their time and are finally released, the vicious cycle starts again with drug use,
another arrest and imprisonment again. The recovery process is disrupted, yet
again.
When attempting to obtain regulated medicines while in prison or upon release,
the drug user can turn to contaminated street drugs, oftentimes heroin or
unbeknownst to them, fentanyl.
Many prisoners are overdosing and dying now when they leave prison. Their bodies
simply can not handle it and they may actually be poisoned by fentanyl. Did you
know just four tiny grains can kill an adult?
It’s time to stop arresting people for drug use. But, how?
While the U.S. has cracked down vigorously, spending billions of dollars
incarcerating drug users, Portugal undertook a monumental experiment focused on
jailing the drug dealers. Since 2001, the country has successfully stopped arresting
users of all drugs including heroin and cocaine.
We want the same method to be deployed in the U.S. With numbers surpassing
107,622 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. and very few states reducing their
statistics, why would we not try this initiative after knowing how effective it has
been in Portugal? This country had the lowest numbers in HIV, 18, and reported
only 34 overdose deaths last year, making it the lowest in Europe. Keep in mind, the
U.S. had 107,622!
32

http://asapnj.org/
https://paariusa.org/
33

CDC Preliminary Numbers
August 2018 - August 2019
Drug OD Deaths
Estimated Drug Overdose
Deaths in 2019 = 72,000
200 a day
34

CDC Preliminary Numbers
August 2018 - August 2019
(Continued)
Drug OD Deaths
Estimated Drug Overdose
Deaths in 2019 = 72,000
200 a day
35

ASK US HOW TO DRUG PROOF
YOUR COMMUNITY
BY DOING THE COMMUNITY FLIP!
This was accomplished 30 years ago in Morristown, Morris Township and Morris
Plains, New Jersey. The opioid epidemic has not touched any of these teens or
alumni (that we know of).
One in four children in all schools is suffering because of someone else's
addiction. This is equal to 25 percent in every school. We must reach them in
order to stop the cycle of trauma and addiction. Carol Egan ran Alateen a local
New Jersey high school for six years. Thirty years later, these meetings continue.
You can do all of this as a community!
1. Student Assistance Counselors (Drug Counselors) in schools, grades K-12 (cost
is about $30 per child) Most towns in New Jersey have also had this in their
schools for 30 years.
The Association Of Substance Abuse Professionals of NJ:
http://asapnj.org/about-2/…
2. Municipal Alliance - The Alliance to Prevent Alcoholism and Drug Abuse in The
New Jersey's Governor's Council On Alcoholism and Drug Abuse was created to
provide networks comprised of all communities in NJ. dedicated to a
comprehensive and coordinated effort against alcoholism and drug abuse at the
Municipal level, and for providing funds including monies from mandatory
penalties on drug offenders to member communities to support appropriate
county and municipal based alcohol and drug abuse education and public
awareness activities.
Parent volunteers executing prevention programs in the schools and community
with drug fine monies. The Mayors, council leaders, schools, school board
members, the police and parents govern these efforts. The money goes through
the town books. Four hundred towns in NJ have had Municipal Alliances for 30
years. There is a $10 million fund of drug fine money, every year.
https://gcada.nj.gov/alliance/
36

ASK US HOW TO DRUG PROOF YOUR COMMUNITY
BY DOING THE COMMUNITY FLIP!
(Continued)
3. FREE Community Drug Counseling And Services since 1990:
Teen Pride is located in Morristown, Morris Township and Morris Plains, New
Jersey.
For 30 years, our community drug counselors have worked with the police, courts
and the schools. Referrals come from the schools and the police. School drug
counselors (SACs) can not go into the homes and are not there on the weekends
or in the summer. The three towns and school district pay for this (all 3 towns
students attend our high school of 1,800 students.) In our first year, we received
130 referrals from the police. The next year, ALL the referrals came from the
schools (about the same number.) The juvenile officer could not believe it. For 30
years, almost all of the referrals have come from the schools. A child must have
parent or guardian involvement in order to participate.
https://www.teenprideinc.org/programs
4. PAARI (Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative) was founded as a
nonprofit alongside the Angel Program to help law enforcement agencies create
non-arrest programs that prevent and reduce overdose deaths and expand access
to treatment and recovery.
PAARI in Gloucester, Massachusetts
For 30 years, almost all of the referrals have come from the schools. Then: There
have been almost no recidivists. We helped teens go to college and get jobs.
If you follow all five of these steps, very few of your teens will end up in the
juvenile system and the one in four children that is being seriously affected by
someone else's addiction will receive help. A culture of CARE will run deep in your
community. Not one child has been lost since Teen Pride began 30 years ago. If a
teen does have an addiction, they get help and return to schools filled with love,
peers, SACs and support. One in 10 teens have serious substance abuse issues. We
have to accept this and deal with it. Parents in our community know not to throw
parties for underage drinkers. If they do, they are held accountable by the police.
37

ASK US HOW TO DRUG PROOF YOUR COMMUNITY
BY DOING THE COMMUNITY FLIP!
1. Influence over the systems that make a community run - the police were
partners in our Municipal Alliance. So were the schools, courts and members of
the Town Council. We enlisted the biggest stakeholders - The PTAs. They ran all of
the parenting programs and school prevention programs. Parents are the biggest
stakeholders and they are the ones who buy in and run with this system. We gave
13 schools $5,000 each to run prevention programs. Speakers, puppet shows,
Foobie the Robot (Your body is a Million Dollar Machine), Red Day, Dances, Teen
Centers and Peer Leadership Retreats. You name it. We made it fun!
2. Identify the avid prevention minded citizens. There are “Carol Egans” in every,
single town. I witnessed this. There are recovering parents who add so much.
3. You change the CULTURE of your community to be accepting of this disease and
have COMPASSION. In our first year, we put a drug counselor in our high school.
He sent 30 kids to rehab. When they returned, there was a safe place to land and
a group of recovering students to support them. The drug counselors work with
the staff. Our biggest fans were our coaches. Yes, we did do random drug testing
of our athletes. In the end, we had drug counselors in all of our schools for 5,000
students. We were a community of 40,000. We then put drug counselors in our
community when we saw that was not enough on the weekends and in the
summer (24/7).
4. Biggest reason to do this - it identifies high risk students and helps them before
they get addicted. The community wraps its arms around recovering teens and
families. In 28 years, we had one case of a teen with a heroin addiction. We have
had no overdoses in our high school in 28 years. We have kept most out of the
criminal justice system.
5. Add a strong prevention curriculum and DARE and... VOILA! You will have a drug
proof community!
All of this was put in place 28 years ago and still works like a dream. Thousands
and thousands of dollars have poured into communities in New Jersey. The
disease is treated like a medical disease in all of our communities. I am PROUD to
say we changed the culture to a culture of compassion toward this disease!
(Continued)
LOVE YOUR COMMUNITIES TIL IT HURTS!
38

Interview With Police Chief Of Porto, Portugal about
The Portugal Model’s Success!
CLICK AND LISTEN TO INTERVIEW
39

PAARI
Police Assisted Addiction Recovery Initiatives
"We can not arrest our way out of this."
The Police Assisted Addiction & Recovery Initiative
(PAARI) provides support and resources to help
law enforcement agencies nationwide create
non-arrest pathways to treatment and recovery.
https://paariusa.org/
40

Recognizing that law enforcement has a front row seat to the opioid epidemic and are in a
unique position to prevent overdose deaths, in June 2015 the Gloucester Police Department
launched the Angel Program, which created a simple, stigma-free entry point to treatment on
demand and reframed addiction as a disease, not a crime. PAARI was founded as a nonprofit
alongside the Angel Program to help law enforcement agencies create non-arrest programs that
prevent and reduce overdose deaths and expand access to treatment and recovery.
Now a national network of more than 400 police departments in 32 states, PAARI primarily
supports non-arrest, or early diversion, program models that reach people before they enter the
criminal justice system. Programs are customized based on the community and can utilize
multiple law enforcement entry points to treatment, including self-referrals to the station and
risk or incident-based outreach. Cross-sector collaboration and partnerships are vital to these
programs and they are often supported by clinicians, social workers, recovery coaches, and/or
trained volunteers.
Any law enforcement or public safety agency that creates non-arrest pathways to treatment can
join PAARI free of cost to access resources such as technical assistance, coaching, program
templates and tools, seed grants, convenings, connections to treatment providers, a network of
like-minded law enforcement agencies, and capacity building and recovery coaches through
AmeriCorps. To join or request more information and support, please complete the online form.
Our Mission
• To provide critical support, such as technical assistance, models, seed grants, Recovery
Coaches, convenings, and other resources to law enforcement agencies to create and
sustain programs that establish a non-arrest pathways to treatment and recovery
• To foster a dialogue about the unique position of law enforcement to address the opioid
crisis, remove stigma, and reframe the conversation about addiction as a disease not a
crime
41

(Continued)
• To educate lawmakers and influence state and national policy around treatment access
• To remove barriers to treatment on demand, including connections to treatment
scholarships
• To build a law enforcement movement and network of like-minded law enforcement
agencies that help people take their first steps on the path to treatment and recovery
Our Story
For decades, municipal police officers have been on the front lines of the war on drugs. Until
now, they have been solely called upon to attempt to disrupt an ever-increasing supply chain.
That meant police officers often found themselves arresting drug addicts as much, if not more
so, than drug dealers and traffickers. In most cases, the addicts were only guilty of possessing
an illegal, life-ruining substance and they faced arrest, prosecution and prison terms. In the
meantime, heroin and opioid addiction has become a severe public health concern in the
United States, destroying and often ending lives.
In 2015, Gloucester, Massachusetts Police Chief Leonard Campanello developed a revolutionary
new way to fight the war on drugs by doing something about the demand, not just the supply.
Under his plan, drug addicts who ask the police department for help will be immediately taken
to a hospital and placed in a recovery program. No arrest. No jail.
The Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative is a nonprofit organization whose mission
is to support the Gloucester Police addiction initiatives, to aid other police departments to
implement similar programs, and to foster a dialogue around the unique opportunity for police
departments to take direct action against the disease of drug addiction in their communities.
Working in conjunction with the medical community and science-based recovery programs,
police departments can make a difference in their communities by saving lives from drug
overdoses, reducing the number of drug addicts and opioid drug demand, thereby devaluing a
seemingly endless drug supply.
We also work to remove the stigma associated with drug addiction, turning the conversation
toward the disease of addiction rather than the crime of addiction. We work directly with
treatment centers to secure scholarships and fully-funded in-patient programs for addicts while
working with police departments, pharmacies, and families to put nasal Narcan into as many
hands as possible, recognizing that while it is not a panacea, Narcan can save the life of an
overdose patient and give that person another opportunity to get into treatment and fight
their disease.
42

True Stories: A Busy Month for AmeriCorps Member Tyshaun Perryman
Each month, our team of PAARI AmeriCorps Members share a short write up of the month’s activities. We’re
pleased to share Tyshaun Perryman’s write up for June 2018 to give you an inside look of what it’s like to be a
PAARI AmeriCorps Member. Tyshaun is serving as a Recovery Coach with Boston Police Department.
Learn more about our AmeriCorps members who are working to make a difference in their communities every
day.
Tyshaun Perryman and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh
Tyshaun Perryman and PAARI
Executive Director Allie
Hunter McDade
Recovery Coach
Tyshaun PerrymanA
June 2018: Busy Month
My work initiative increased this month tremendously. Five people were placed in treatment, I did a lot of
Recovery Coach training and I attended several exciting events. Out of the five people placed; four have gone
on to further treatment after leaving detox, and only one has returned back to the streets. I continue to
follow-up with this individual and to encourage him to “never give up!”
Regarding the meetings I attended: I attended the Hub meeting at Urban Edge in Jamaica Plain. This meeting
was great because I became a part of a collaborative team of diverse human service professionals whose soul
purpose is to help people who are in acute crisis situations overcome their circumstances. I attended the US
Conference of Mayors that addressed the opioids crisis. At the conference I was sworn in by Mayor Walsh as
an AmeriCorps civil servant. This was an honor. Lastly, I attended the third annual PAARI Awards Ceremony in
Gloucester. It was a fantastic event, full of honorable public servants who deserved to be recognized for their
tremendous contribution to society and PAARI.
I attended the Faster Paths training at Boston Medical Center. At the training I was blessed with the fortunate
opportunity to to meet Dr. Edward Weinstein. He is a pioneer in substance use disorder treatment services,
the founder of Project Assert, and creator of the Brief Negotiated Interview, which is a form of motivational
interviewing.
I also attended the Recovery Coach Training II course at North Shore Community College. My trainer was a
fabulous guy by the name of Steve Chisolm. Over the four days of training I was able to network with peers,
increase my education on Recovery Coaching, and finish all the core training courses necessary to obtain my
CARC Recovery Coach Certification.
Overall, this month has been my most productive and busiest month since working with PAARI as a result of
the knowledge and experience gained this month, I am a better Recovery Coach than I was before.
Article by Tyshaun Perryman / True Stories / AmeriCorps, PAARI, Tyshaun Perryman
43

GO MORRIS COUNTY, NJ!!
On April 3, 2019, the Morris County
Sheriff’s Office became the first law
enforcement agency in the county and
the first Sheriff’s Office in New Jersey to
sign on to the Police Assisted Addiction &
Recovery Initiative (PAARI), which offers
people with substance use disorders a
pathway to treatment and recovery.
sheriff.morriscountynj.gov/2020/07/02/morriscounty-sheriffs-officers-undergo-additionaltraining-on-engaging-with-people-withsubstance-use-and-mental-health-disorders
44

1. Look for THE WILL - Is it your Mayor, Police Chief, Town Council, Parents, or
your School District? Begin to educate those with THE WILL on The USA FLIP and
on:
2. PARRI - Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative - A non-arrest program
that places people in treatment after overdoses. The best holistic program in this
country.
3. Suggest building a community coalition or group to support prevention and
treatment like the Municipal Alliances that exist in 400 towns in New Jersey.
These alliances are funded with money from drug fines and provide alternative
activities for kids, teen centers, prevention and parenting programs.
4. Suggest putting Student Assistance Counselors (SACs) in your schools. It may
cost your community $40 per child. You will get to those high risk and hurting
kids. One in four or 25 percent are being seriously affected by someone's
substance abuse. One in eight teens have serious problems with substance abuse.
Intervene early!
5. Learn about your drug and alcohol prevention curriculum for grades K-12. Or
suggest finding a proven prevention curriculum. We must teach our teens about
opioids, fentanyl and fake pills!
What we saw in Dayton, Ohio was exactly the same in Portugal. EXTREME
CARING. Literally engaging EVERY SINGLE group, church and non profit in the
country in the effort. It is the spirit of caring that was extraordinary. That spirit of
"by any means necessary."
What was so interesting in both Portugal and Dayton was that recovering people
lead the show. TONS AND TONS of PEERS (trained people with lived experience.)
In Dayton almost everyone at the top was in long term recovery. The churches
play a significant role. As does this group called FOA (Families Of Addicts) by Laurie Eoin.
45

(Continued)
We went to their weekly meeting filled with up to 200 people with families of
alcoholics and addicts. Many have lost loved ones. They feed them every week
buffet style - pot luck and pizzas donated by a local restaurant owner. They have
other meetings around the country.
We also were so impressed with Goodwill Easter Seals. They train 100 new
Peer Counselors a year. All agencies have come together and receive tons of money
for helping with the epidemic. You could do zoom meetings with the leaders to learn
about their funding and successes. The top two were so impressive. Casey Steckling
works for them and also runs Dayton Recovers. We have a Watchdog who does
harm reduction there and says it is not enough. She feels many more clean needles
must be given out, Narcan and testing strips. The needle exchange there just started
and she says it is not open enough. The Mayor of Dayton is all for overdose
prevention sites. What was incredible is that THEY DID NOT KNOW ONE THING
ABOUT PORTUGAL. Ironically, their presentation was very similar to Portugal's at the
COAT and at SICAD Headquarters in Portugal. Dayton figured out what works on
their own and have successfully reduced their overdose death numbers within three
years from 588 to 266.
They have a PARRI-type organization called GROW. The police are really tuned in.
The Peers and Police Recovery Team (GROW) go to overdoses. They see about three
overdoses per day from 15. They were the overdose capital. Now, they are one of
the only locations in America that has reduced their numbers down by half.
Burlington, Vermont has reduced from 34 to 17. They attribute their success to
buprenorphine treatment given at the first meeting with a user. This drug stops the
cravings and helps people with withdrawal.
Dayton has THE WILL. They have a Command Center in Dayton and know where
services are needed and make them happen. I am sure not too many counties in
America are so singularly focused. They should be. New Jersey has THE WILL. Fifteen
of 30 towns have PARRI. All of towns have Municipal Alliances and SACs in the
schools.
46

47

48

TV Host Dr. Laura Berman’s Son,
16, Dies of a Drug Overdose
Laura Berman’s son died at 16 from a fake
Xanax pill laced with fentanyl. He bought it
from snapchat. He was poisoned. 4 tiny grains
of fentanyl can kill an adult. He joins the 230
people poisoned by fentanyl every single day.
40 others die from overdose from drugs ever
single day. That is 270 per day and 100,000 in
2020. Please help our country and families by
spreading awareness about fentanyl poisoning
and the opioid/drug epidemic. We have each
other. Please volunteer to make 10 calls and
send 10 postcards!
49

James Wahlberg
Dynamic School Assemblies
The Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation travels across the United
States to spread awareness on opioid abuse. Their latest stop was
Rio Rancho for a summit that's fun and educational. There was
breakdancing, Native American performances and even New
Mexico’s Chevel Shepherd. It was important for the Wahlbergs to
bring the event to New Mexico. “The locations for these events
are not picked by us. They're picked by the experts and the
experts are the DEA,” James said. “Last year in New Mexico, 500
people died because of drug overdoses,” DEA Special Agent in
Charge, Kyle Williamson said. The DEA knows all too well about
the drug problem in our state and reminded kids that a single
taste of opioids could be lethal.
50

(Continued)
“Parents and kids need to know that their medicine cabinet kills,”
Williamson said. That stark warning was revealed in a film about a teen
whose experimentation with pills led to a heroin overdose. The event's
ultimate message? Find a passion. “If you're passionate about something,
you're less likely to fall into this trap,” James said. Young people can
choose life and a future, not a state of addiction.
Jim Wahlberg If Only If Only, is a short film intended for adolescents,
parents, and adults to raise awareness of the dangers of prescription
drug abuse and to begin a conversation that encourages the safe use,
storage and disposal of prescription drugs to keep them out of the
hands of children.
But the real stars of the event were the 3,000 kids from across the state
who attended. They’re now empowered with the knowledge that opioids
can be fatal.
“We've lost 74,000 American citizens last year alone to overdose,” James
Wahlberg said.
James Wahlberg and his brother, actor Mark Wahlberg hope their
foundation makes a difference.
“This event is about acknowledging those people, and it's also about
trying to inspire youth to make healthy choices,” James said.
Jim Wahlberg If Only If Only Trailer
51

More than 3,000 students learn about
opioid dangers at youth summit
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —The Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation travels across
the United States to spread awareness on opioid abuse. Their latest stop was
Rio Rancho for a summit that's fun and educational.
more-than-3000-
students-learnabout-opioiddangers-at-youthsummit
52

In honor of Red Ribbon Week 4 very strong moms share
their children with you.
We are sharing our sons and daughters in hopes of
saving your sons and daughters from following a path
they may not return from.
Please share this with your family and friends, no one is
immune to this drug epidemic our country is currently
facing. Speak to your children and really listen to what
they have to say. Protect your family with knowledge.
You are welcomed to share this PSA. We created it for
our schools.
CLICK TO
VIEW VIDEO
October 23,2020
53

HOW TO WARN YOUR SCHOOL BOARD ABOUT
FAKE PILLS AND THE NEED FOR NARCAN
We encourage you to use this letter template:
Dear, Board of Education Members:
I am a member of the opioid advocacy group, Purdue Watchdogs.
With the number of fatal overdoses being attributed to fentanyl-laced drugs,
including the newest killer —M30 — a counterfeit pill resembling 30 mg of
Oxycodone Hydrochloride, it is imperative that a specific awareness campaign
targeting middle and high school students deploys, immediately.
When providing drug awareness programs in our schools, health instructors
often times do not specifically address opioids. Instead, they are grouped
together under the “narcotics” category and often come with a generic warning
for children to stay away from. No other details. No examples of prescription
names or counterfeit alternatives.
What is not being shared, and what must be delivered in a very direct manner, is
that many fentanyl-laced drugs are being peddled on the street and consumed
by people who assume they are receiving oxycodone, Oxycontin, hydrocodone,
meth, heroin or cocaine.
Additionally, an opioid as well as the illegal drugs, heroin and fentanyl — take
just 5 days —to increase the likelihood that a person will use the drug long
term. For many, it can lead to a lifetime of addiction.
As well, the overdose age has dipped below 20 years old.
54

Did You Know?
You may be aware of the recent death attributed to M30. Teen victim, Gabriel
Lilienthal, a 17-year-old Ballard High School, Seattle student. His step-father, Dr.
Jedediah Kaufman, a surgeon, blindsided by the news that Gabriel dies from a
M30 pill. Kaufman said, "I had never heard of it and I give fentanyl to my
patients every day, every week as a surgeon. It's a very powerful drug. Thirty to
50 times more powerful than raw heroin."
We respectfully ask that an informational flyer similar to the one below be
customized for age-appropriate narcotics education. This information will help
to clarify with children the real dangers of opioids, including those alternatives
that are disguised as the real drug.
Perhaps, we can form a committee to finalize it together and work on a
campaign to launch throughout our middle and high schools.
(Continued)
1. Fentanyl is responsible for most of the fatal overdoses today?
2. It only takes 4 tiny grains of fentanyl to kill a person?
3. Three teens in two months have overdosed and died in Seattle, Washington.
One was 17 and ingested 30 M marked pills that were sold as oxycodone and
laced with fentanyl. The other two boys -age 16 - consumed counterfeit pills also
laced with fentanyl. The 17-year-old’s step-father is a surgeon who had no idea
about counterfeit pills.
4. One teen brought enough fentanyl pills to school to kill 1,500 people?
5. More than 200 parents get the phone call every single day that their children
have overdosed on opioids?
6. Not ONE state can combat the opioid epidemic and stop these calls?
7. In 2016, 68,000 died from drug overdose. In 2019, 72,000 and in 2020, 81,000.
55

8. Opioids are 80% addictive? People turn to heroin and fentanyl when they are
addicted and cannot get access to opioids.
9. Twenty-five tons of fentanyl were confiscated in Mexico, recently? That is
enough to kill 92% of the world’s population.
10. America's illicit drug supply is tainted with fentanyl and no drug should ever
be purchased on the black market/street.
I would also like to address the availability of Narcan in our schools. If so, are the
faculty and staff trained to administer it?
It is critical that Narcan is available in every middle and high school and staff
should be trained to administer it. Should a student overdose, there are only 6 –
8 minutes to administer it. We can consider the availability of Narcan as an
insurance policy just as defibrillators are in public venues. It is an investment in
our future. Although, we are asking children to refrain from drugs, we must be
realistic. We, do indeed, have an opioid epidemic on our hands that does not
discriminate based on age, or any other demographic.
It is time to stop the silence over opioids. This is a battle we need your help
with, Board Members. We are working around the clock among 33 states and in
Puerto Rico to get the word out. We have traveled to Portugal and Dayton, Ohio
to benchmark best practices that decriminalize opioid use and, instead,
champion recovery and harm reduction.
By partnering with us, and working with our district, we can target children early
on and arm them with the right tool to fight this epidemic – education! I am
available to assist district administration to evaluate what makes the most sense
as a first step. Thank you for your time, service and consideration.
Sincerely,
(Continued)
__________(your name here and phone number)
Member, Purdue Watchdogs
56

WHERE IS THE NATIONAL STRATEGY
TO STOP OUR YOUNG FROM BEING
POISONED BY FENTANYL?
93% OF DEATHS IN MASS. IN 2019
AND 86% IN VERMONT WERE
FENTANYL POISONING!
WE NEED A COMMAND CENTER
APPROACH LIKE PORTUGAL AND
DAYTON HAVE.
300 MOM’S AND DAD’S GET THE
CALL A DAY! NOT ONE STATE CAN
STOP THE CALLS!
108,000 CALLS IN 2021
57

Intentionally left blank
Global Recovery Movement Email: info@grmovement.net

59

The Pharmacist Trailer
60

SIGN IN SO PHARMA DOESN'T WIN!
Who caught 60 Minutes Sunday June 20 th ?
Or are you one of the 100 Million people that have watched The
Pharmacist Netflix?
This many of us could really propel Dan Schneider's Tunnel of Hope
Movement to end the opioid epidemic:
#SignInSoPharmaDoesntWin
Join The Pharmacist's People's Lobby at
tunnelofhope.org!
Money, dinners and strip clubs: How
pharmaceutical executives bribed doctors
to prescribe dangerous fentanyl drugs
A former sales VP for a pharmaceutical company who was
sentenced to prison tells 60 Minutes he bribed doctors to
prescribe fentanyl drugs. Bill Whitaker reports.
www.cbsnews.com/news/opioid-epidemic-pharmaceutical-executives-60-minutes
62

DAN SCHNEIDER - THE PHARMACIST -
TED TALK 2020
Introducing The Portugal Flip - Flip Addiction
From Criminal Justice To Healthcare
Click to Watch Video
63

The Pharmacist's
People's Lobby
64

65

66

67

JOHN SHINHOLSER TALKS ON THE PORTUGAL FLIP
Get In The Herd:
After Hours with John Shinholser & Special Guest Andrea
Wright and Paul Thomson as we discuss the Portugal Model
and further look into The Portugal Flip in the Recovery
Space and how we can utilize this model in affectively
changing stigma and how we address those in Recovery
and those suffering from SUD.
Get In The Herd
John Shinholser
Special guest former commonwealth attorney Paul
Hampton Thomson and recovery expert Andrea
Marie-Françoise, we will be discussing needed changes
to our flawed national recovery and drug policies.
Get In The Herd with
John Shinholser with guests
Camielle Schrier (Miss America) and
Dan Schneider (The Pharmacist)
Live on FB 4/25/20
Discussing the Portugal Flip
68

THE USA FLIP = TREATMENT NOT JAIL!
Interview on the USA FLIP with John Shinholser,
Andrea Wright, Paul Thomson and Carol Egan.
Click and watch, USA FLIP Interview
To Flip Addiction From The Criminal Justice System To The Primary Care System. The USA
Flip could decrease overdose deaths by 90% and decrease our incarceration by 75%.
90% of dollars would go to treatment not jail. This is how Portugal did it 20 years ago!
We had 68,000 overdose deaths in 2018. Portugal had 30. Michigan is the same size as
Portugal Michigan and had 2,700 overdose deaths in 2017. Portugal had 34. Portugal
puts their money into treatment not jail! Portugal has the lowest overdose deaths in
Europe, by far!
Our Doctors would be trained in diagnosing and treating addictions in Medical Schools.
Harvard just graduated their first Medical School Class with addiction training. Hard to
believe.
We can do The Community Flip And Drug Proof Our Communities!
If you want to help us fight please sign into The Pharmacist's People's Lobby at
tunnelofhope.org and join The Global Recovery Movement on Facebook!
69

John Shinholser
Introduces the USA FLIP
Click
70

Get In The Herd with John Shinholser & Carol Egan
(click to watch)
Join Us this morning at 11 AM EST for the Get In The Herd Podcast Series from
the McShin Foundation with John Shinholser & Carol Egan as they will be
discussing the USA Flip and how we can best utilize this model in helping the
Recovery Community.
If you or a Loved One are struggling please connect with us by calling 804-
249-1845 or by visiting www.mcshin.org
71

Rooting For Recovery Memorial Tree Dedication
At The McShin Foundation 2020
John Shinholser and
Miss America - Camille Schrier
72

73

74

Introduction
“Doctor's got us into this and doctors have to get us out.” - Dean David
Roberts, External Education, Harvard Medical School, The Opioid Crisis: HMS
Responds With Education
No truer words were spoken as we look for solutions to the ongoing opioid
epidemic. The same mantra goes for dentists who all too eagerly swallowed
up the incentives from Big Pharma and doled out prescription after
prescription of OxyContin for post-dental work. And, for the pharmacists
who obediently filled those prescriptions, despite seeing the same faces
returning repeatedly to refill this dangerous and addictive drug. The
equation of those responsible for creating this opioid epidemic has many
elements and medical personnel top the list.
To offset the continuous need to write a prescription for addiction, we
propose doctors and dentists receive critical training in addiction while in
medical school. If they are already practicing physicians, then a required
addiction training module in order to keep their medical licenses is a second
path to be followed.
There is no need to wait. Online courses in the age of COVID-19 have shown
to produce successful results with teaching and learning. Therefore,
addiction training can be offered immediately and treated just like
continuous education units, or CEUs, like many professions require. They are
a must if a professional wants to keep their credentials valid.
The terrifying fact that teens and young adults make up an enormous
percentage of addicted opioid users points to physicians guilt in
overprescribing. Again, limitations and attention to age prior to prescribing
and only when necessary needs to be at the forefront of the addiction
training.
75

And, if and when, opioids are prescribed physicians must be required to
warn their patients about opioids during their first visit. Since the
physicians will now be educated in addiction, they can pass on this critical
knowledge to their patients who may be unaware of the effects of even 7-
10 days of opioid use.
As part of their addiction training, alternative pain treatments should be a
part of the teachings made available to phyisicans. These alternative
methods include yoga, meditation, chiropractor, accupuncture, physical
therapy, salves like biofreeze, arnicare and CBD oil, exercise, massage and
aromatherapy and need to be in the forefront, with opioids ONLY as a last
resort.
If and when opioids must be prescribed, there are creative ways of
prescribing opioids. One such method is to advise patients to take two
Advil and two ibuprofen tablets while prescribing a reduced amount of
opioids to offset the schedule (e.g. prescribing a total of 28 rather than the
typical 40 tablets post-surgery). This method helps to prevent patients
from refilling.
To close with an interesting fact that should be shouted from the rooftops
to all prescribing physicians: opioids do not work as well as they have
been fooled into thinking!
76

A Yale- designed treatment, in which
emergency department doctors administer
the drug buprenorphine to patients
experiencing opioid use disorder, has been
increasingly adopted in hospitals across the
U.S., a new analysis finds.
“For individuals who come to an emergency
department after an opioid overdose and
receive buprenorphine, their one- year
mortality rate falls by 40%,” said Fiellin.
And, he added, patients treated with
buprenorphine have been shown to have an
improved social and family outcomes,
better job performance, and lower rates of
infections (including HIV).
77

You can contact your hospital
Dear (hospital)
I just saw this article in JAMA Network
Open about the promising results ER
doctors have seen administering
buprenorphine to patients experiencing
opioid use disorder. Patients treated
with buprenorphine have been shown to
have improved social and family
outcomes, better job performance, and
lower rates of infections (including
HIV). A Yale research team has
advocated for wider use of the
medication in emergency rooms.
I'd like to know if Buprenorphine or
Suboxone are being used in your ER? See
article below.
Thank you,
(your name) (add org. if you want)
CLICK to read article: Yale-designed treatment
10-20-20
78

The Opioid Crisis:
Harvard Medical School
Responds With
Education
https://youtu.be/hF0XQ3gwqLg
79

As doctors, we call for treatment, not
incarceration, for those with drug addiction.
By Daniel Low, Kathryn Treit & Amish J. Dave
Special to The Times / Nov. 8, 2020 at 12:01 pm
Volunteers deliver boxes containing signed petitions
in favor of Measure 110 to the Oregon Secretary of
State’s office in Salem in June.
Yale-designed treatment for opioid use
disorder in EDs gains widespread use
By Brita Belli / October 20, 2020
(© stock.adobe.com)
https://news.yale.edu/2020/10/20/
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Doctors and dentists continue to
prescribe opioids to teens and young
adults at high rates, study says
An icepack and tylenol are cheaper than rehab and
your child’s life.
“A little over a year ago my son had an ear surgery at Johns
Hopkins, While it was relatively simple procedure, It was also
a fairly new procedure, We stayed one night, as we are
leaving, The doctor was giving us our instructions and said he
was giving my son 30 pills of Percocet for pain, my son was 10
years old. I respectfully declined as my son was not in any
pain. I asked him to write the prescription for 5 pills just in
case he was in pain later. We never filled the prescriptions my
son used Tylenol for the headache and that was it. You must
be your and your families own advocates. We have to learn
from this opioid crisis. It truly becomes a matter of life and
death.”
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/28/health/o
pioid-prescriptions-teens-and-young-adults
81

How Germany Averted
An Opioid Crisis
“Among the most important reasons we do
not face a similar opioid crisis seems to be a
more responsible and restrained practice of
prescription,” said Dr. Peter Raiser, the
deputy managing director at the German
Center for Addiction Issues.
khn.org/news/how-germany-averted-an-opioid-crisis/
82

To Stop Deadly
Overdoses,
'The Opioid Fix' Urges
Better Use Of Tools
We Already Have
Johns Hopkins University Press
July 21, 20202:05 PM ET
CARRIE FEIBEL
More Americans than ever — almost 72,000 — died from a drug overdose last year,
according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Protection.
This grim record for 2019 was driven by deaths from synthetic opioids like fentanyl,
though overdoses involving cocaine and meth also played a role.
Many warn that 2020 could be even worse, as the coronavirus pandemic increases
isolation, despair, and economic hardship — all known risk factors for addiction.
"The coronavirus pandemic is, unfortunately, expected to worsen the opioid overdose
crisis," says Barbara Andraka-Christou, an assistant professor of health management and
informatics at the University of Central Florida.
"Many individuals are experiencing triggers, such as family- or job-related stress, that
may lead them to relapse," she says. "Many people are losing their jobs and the funds
necessary to pay for lifesaving health care. Those of us working in public health research
are very worried.“
Indeed, evidence is already emerging that overdoses are up in the first half of the year,
based on preliminary reports.
But Andraka-Christou also sees a "silver lining" to the pandemic, as federal and state
officials have temporarily relaxed some of the strict regulations governing the medical
treatment of opioid addiction.
83

Andraka-Christou has spent years studying those regulations, and in her new book she
explains how they prevent patients with opioid use disorder from accessing effective,
life-saving medications such as buprenorphine and methadone. NPR recently spoke with
Andraka-Christou about her book, The Opioid Fix: America's Addiction Crisis and the
Solution They Don't Want You to Have.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Many books about the opioid epidemic focus on the problem — the suffering
patients, the ravaged communities — and discuss who is to blame. Your book,
refreshingly, focuses tightly on treatment as a solution. Why did you decide to write a
book about treatment?
I remember once giving a presentation in Indiana to a community organization about
treatment, and someone got really upset at the end. She stood up and said that her son
had died of an opioid overdose, and she was really upset that I wasn't talking about
prevention, that I was talking about treatment.
I realized that most of the public messaging I was hearing was about prevention, not
treatment: "Let's warn people that opioids are dangerous!" or the push to have
lawmakers put limits on the prescribing of pain pills by physicians.
But we can't just ignore those who have already developed an addiction, and just
assume "Well, they are too far gone, so we need to start with the new, 'innocent' people
and try to prevent them from actually developing this awful disorder."
Why do you think it's so much harder to talk about treatment, or for communities to
come together to provide it?
It comes back to this moral perception that drug use is a choice. And certainly the first
time, it often is. But to develop a disorder where you're compulsively using something
with horrible consequences? At a certain point, it's no longer a choice. But given
society's limited resources, many don't want to apply those resources to people who are
just "making a bad decision." You want to apply them towards the uninitiated, the ones
who haven't taken that first step of getting a pill prescription.
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But it's ironic, because on the treatment side, the tools are already there. We actually
know what works. It's really well established. On the prevention side, it's a lot more
tricky. Yes, we can prevent someone from taking that first opioid, to a certain extent, by
not over-prescribing. But we know, for example, that adverse childhood experiences
play a huge role in one's likelihood of developing any substance use disorder. And how
do you prevent that? That's so incredibly complex. I couldn't even begin to come up
with a strategy to prevent that, whereas I can pretty quickly tell you what to do to treat
someone with opioid use disorder.
You would recommend medication-assisted treatment (MAT) using methadone and
buprenorphine (commonly marketed as Suboxone). How helpful are these
medications? And why are there so many barriers to using them more widely?
There's a lot of negativity that exists with respect to methadone and buprenorphine.
Which is wildly problematic, when you think that another article just came out showing
that buprenorphine and methadone are absolutely the best at preventing opioid
overdose and opioid relapse as compared to a variety of other treatments, including
naltrexone, including residential treatment, including outpatient treatment, including
detox.
This book isn't some shocking new innovation. I'm not saying 'Wow, we just discovered
that these medications are great!' It's the complete opposite. We've known for decades
that these are the most effective treatments.
When I started looking at the laws surrounding Suboxone or buprenorphine, I was
fascinated because they were so stringent. At the time, they were more stringent in
several respects than laws regulating pills like oxycodone or OxyContin. I thought that's
just ridiculous and hypocritical.
There are a ton of legal barriers, but then I started seeing other things like stigma
against MAT in the recovery community itself, within 12-step groups, within residential
centers (or "rehab" programs as they're commonly called). Then I started seeing cost
issues and health insurance barriers like prior authorizations.
The subtitle of your book is pretty direct: "The Solution They Don't Want You to
Have." Who is "they"? Who doesn't want people to use medication-assisted
treatment?
85

'They" refers to the recovery community, but also the criminal justice system. Those are
the two main actors whom I've seen affirmatively saying "Don't take these
medications." And by recovery community, I don't just mean some 12-step groups. I also
mean rehab centers that will actively tell people "By the way, when you leave, don't take
Suboxone" or "We won't even let you into our center if you take Suboxone."
The book goes deep inside the world of drug courts, which provide an alternative to
prison. But your research found that many judges ignore the potential of MAT, and some
even force people in recovery to stop taking medicine as a condition of staying out of
jail, or to regain custody of their kids. What's going on?
There is basic intellectual confusion over the fact that buprenorphine and methadone
are opioids, although of a very different kind [than heroin and addictive opioid
painkillers]. As one judge told me: "Why would we just give a whiskey bottle to an
alcoholic?" But the focus shouldn't be on the fact that buprenorphine is an opioid. The
focus needs to be on the fact that someone taking it is able to function and they're able
to function better.
Back in 2013, there was a groundbreaking study published that showed that 50% of
adult drug courts nationally prohibited buprenorphine, which is just mind blowing. Now,
we haven't had a study of that scale to date, so we don't know how those numbers have
changed. But I have done my own studies looking at smaller areas, and also statewide in
Indiana and in Florida, and there's still a lot of negativity in the court system towards
methadone and buprenorphine, especially — not so much towards naltrexone, because
it's not an opioid.
You write that some of the stigma against MAT is easing, and in the book you
acknowledge some of the clinicians and treatment centers that do understand how
effective MAT can be, and encourage it and prescribe it. But what other changes could
help?
The people who run drug courts, who make decisions about practices and policies in
that court, they're not composed of medical professionals. You have a judge, the
prosecutor, a program administrator, and a counselor who is typically from a community
agency, which is often — statistically, it's 65% of the time — abstinence-only. So there's
little information sharing within that environment about the medications.
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They're very autonomous, these courts. Oftentimes there's no real oversight over them.
Now, Florida, interestingly, in about a year or so, is going to be requiring courts, at least
the adult drug courts, to get certified in order to get funding. And part of the
certification requirements will include adhering to best practices with respect to MAT.
And that's really exciting.
That's something I actually argued for, in one of the first articles I wrote. Why aren't
more states doing this? Greater oversight is so important when there are decision
makers who don't have a medical background, making decisions that impact people's
health care.
87

Cur·tain | \ ˈkər-tᵊn:
a device or agent that conceals or acts as a barrier.
Curtains is ultimately an activist project -- a work of
protest
art against those who shield dangerous actors in our
society.
These Curtains are a symbol, spotlighting the enablers
obscuring wrongdoers who harm others for financial or
political gain. Currently, we are targeting the many
people who shield the criminals responsible for the
opioid crisis from facing legal, civil, political, and social
ramifications for their actions.
These “curtains” are the barriers standing between
our world and a just one. If our systems won’t hold
wrongdoers accountable, then that task falls to us. We
will protect the unprotected, mend the broken, and
speak for the silenced. We encourage others to practice
moral courage and stand with us.
88

Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery
December 22, 2020
CLICK to watch video
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Opioids offer minimal benefit to pain,
function in OA, no aid to QoL
Opioids offer only minimal relief of osteoarthritis symptoms within a 12-
week period, and cause discomfort in most patients, according to
findings published in Arthritis Care & Research.
“We wanted to assess the impact of opioids on all patient-centered
outcomes to produce results that would be relevant to patients and
clinicians alike,” Raveendhara R. Bannuru, MD, PhD, FAGE, of Tufts
Medical Center in Boston told Healio Rheumatology. “Though the risks of
opioid use are relatively well known, some patients and providers still
favor using the drugs. We hoped to explore some understudied outcomes
that could hold clues as to what benefits, if any, opioids offer to patients.
“Our study is unique because we estimated the trajectory of the impact
that opioids have on pain and functional outcomes in OA patients over
time,” he added. “Temporal assessments can illustrate an optimal
therapeutic window within which a treatment is most efficacious.”
To examine temporal patterns in pain relief and functional improvement
in patients treated with opioids for knee or hip OA, and assess their
safety, Bannuru and colleagues conducted a systematic review and metaanalysis
of randomized controlled trials. They searched Medline, Embase,
PubMed Central and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials
from inception to December. The researchers also sought out
unpublished data. In all, Bannuru and colleagues included 18
placebocontrolled trials of oral opioids, covering 9,283 patients with knee
or hip OA.
The researchers calculated standardized mean differences for pain and
function at 2, 4, 8 and 12 weeks, and conducted subgroup analyses for
strong and weak/intermediate opioids. Additionally, they performed
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metaregression to analyze the impact of dosage on pain relief, based on
morphine equivalency. Lastly, Bannuru and colleagues calculated risk
ratios for safety at the final follow up.
According to the researchers, opioids provided small benefits regarding
pain at each time point, with standardized mean differences ranging from
–0.28 (95% CI, –0.38 to –0.17) to –0.19 (95% CI, –0.29 to –0.08), with
similar effects regarding function. In addition, strong opioids
demonstrated consistently inferior efficacy and overall worse safety
compared with weak or intermediate opioids. A metaregression analysis
suggested that incremental pain relief achieved beyond 20 to 50 mg
doses was not substantial in light of increased safety risks, the
researchers wrote.
“Our results suggest that oral opioids have only small benefits on pain
and function in OA,” Bannuru said. “Additionally, we found that the
magnitude of these effects remains small and continues to decrease over
time. We also found that strong opioids consistently underperformed
compared to weak or intermediate opioids.
“On the other hand, participants who received opioids were significantly
more likely to experience adverse events, especially gastrointestinal
discomfort and daytime drowsiness,” he added. “In light of dependency
concerns and the discomfort that many patients feel while taking the
drugs, it would appear that there is no optimal therapeutic window for
the use of oral opioids in OA.”
PERSPECTIVE
Allan Gibofsky, MD, JD
It is generally accepted that the best treatment for end-stage “bone on
bone” osteoarthritis of a large joint is arthroplasty. That option, however,
may not be appropriate for many patients, especially those with diffuse
91

disease and those with concurrent medical conditions, including
hypertensive cardiovascular disease, congestive heart failure and
diabetes. In this latter group, these conditions when present — and
especially if not adequately controlled — may significantly increase the
risk of surgical morbidity and mortality.
For that reason, patients who are not candidates for surgery require
adequate pain management for their symptoms. Unfortunately, the use
of NSAIDs and minor analgesics is usually inadequate, and physicians
often find themselves in a position of having to prescribe opioids to these
patients.
In their systematic review, Osani and colleagues found that — when
compared to placebo — opioids showed only small benefit to pain and
function and contributed no measurable benefit to health-related quality
of life, while at the same time showing an increased risk of adverse
events. Strong opioids demonstrated consistently inferior efficacy and
overall worse safety than weak/intermediate opioids. Given the results of
this study, the authors correctly conclude that clinicians and policymakers
should reconsider the utility of opioids in the management of OA.
By Jason Laday
Perspective from Allan Gibofsky, MD, JD
Source/Disclosures
Source: Osani MC, et al. Arthritis Care Res. 2020;doi:10.1002/acr.24363.
Disclosures: Bannuru reports no relevant financial disclosures. Co-author Stefan Lohmander,
MD, PhD, of Lund University, in Sweden, reports personal fees from Arthro Therapeutics AB,
GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Pfizer and Regeneron.
92

93

Feds In Connecticut Warn Of
Fentanyl-Laced Pain Pills
Federal authorities in
Connecticut have issued a
warning about black market
pain pills.
Connecticut Fentanyl-Laced Pain Pills
'Dangerous time right
now for our youth':
Seaside police react after
teen overdose
Seaside police react after teen overdose
94

Mom of “The Flash” star Logan Williams:
His death is not going to be in vain”
By Eric Hegedus
May 15, 2020 | 5:35pm | Updated
Logan Williams
Six weeks after his unexpected death,
the mother of teen B.C. actor Logan
Williams has revealed the cause of his
death.
Marlyse Williams said a preliminary
toxicology report showed that her son
died as a result of a fentanyl overdose
during an in-depth interview with
the New York Post published on May 15,
2020.
"Logan Was 16"
Dear friends,
I want to make a statement regarding the news stories that have picked up the New York
Post piece that are circulating and have completely skewed the facts.
The truth is I did EVERYTHING in my power and I mean EVERYTHING to help Logan. My
friends and family are fully aware of the desperate measures I took to help.
The fact is there so much red tape in BC and Canada that it was a full-time job fighting the
system to get the help needed. Laws need to change!!! For starters, our punishment on
95

drug dealers is a simple slap on the wrist. We need long, tough sentences for drug dealers
that are actively destroying our youth. We also have an old, archaic postal privacy law in
Canada that just allows drugs such as opioids like Fentanyl come in legally!!! Yes, you heard
me correctly... LEGALLY!! Check out this link below explaining.
BC has the most overdose deaths per capita in North America and the Opioids are
rampant... the government is not acting on this epidemic that is killing our loved ones.
Fentanyl is now laced in 82% of all drugs in the lower mainland. B.C. and the Canadian
government need to take action and get tough on these crimes!!! Change has to happen.
There are three and four month wait lists for treatment programs. Not to mention in BC
treatment is voluntary !!! I am actively working with our MLA to create a forced treatment
law for youth. A young person doesn’t know what rock bottom is... the drugs now a days is
an instant death sentence. It’s handing a loaded gun to a kid whose brain isn’t fully formed.
There is an enormous stigma to addiction and mental health even by medical
professionals! It’s this giant epidemic that everyone wants to turn a blind eye to until it hits
your family.
I have learned that no matter how your child was raised… single parent, two parents,
sports, no sports, money, no money, African American, Caucasian, Asian, Hispanic male,
female etc…. this disease does not discriminate. Oh, and it is a disease!!! For those that
don’t want to believe that, I feel sorry for you. No person wants to be an addict. Brain
chemistry, genetics, mental health, trauma etc... can all play a part in why one person gets
addicted and an other person doesn’t.
Logan was raised with lots of love, laughter and an amazing supportive family. I want to be
clear that acting had NOTHING to do with the path he went down. He very much enjoyed
his minor roles and loved being on set. It was his happiest times. Everyone was wonderful
and we met the greatest cast & crew who have been so lovely.
The pain of losing my beautiful Logan is so gut wrenching that there are no words to
describe how devastating and hollow I feel. I loved Logan with every ounce of my being. To
say he was an extremely special person is an understatement. He was my everything.
I will do everything in my power to create a legacy to help others, change laws and
anything I can to create positive change out of Logan’s tragic death.
Sincerely,
Marlyse Williams
(Continued)
https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/fentanyl-mail/
96

CLICK: Inside the Sinaloa
Cartel’s fentanyl pipeline:
97

Revealed: how Mexico's Sinaloa
cartel has created a global
network to rule the fentanyl trade
Audrey Travère and Jules Giraudat in Culiacán
Tue 8 Dec 2020
Drugs bust in India sheds light on how
adaptable cartels have come to
dominate the lucrative trade in the
powerful synthetic opioid
CLICK TO READ ARTICLE: mexico-cartelproject-synthetic-opioid-fentanyl-drugs
98

FENTANYL POISONING IS KILLING 85% IN 2020
100,000 OD 2020
270 A DAY
85% WERE FENTANYL POISONING =
230 A DAY POISONED

(Continued)
Opioid crisis
The opioid
crisis is
forcing more
kids into the
foster system
DEA warns of
counterfeit
prescription pills
from Mexico
“Capitalizing on the opioid epidemic and prescription drug abuse
in the United States, drug trafficking organizations are now
sending counterfeit pills made with fentanyl in bulk to the United
States for distribution,” said DEA Acting Administrator Uttam
Dhillon in a statement. “Counterfeit pills that contain fentanyl
and fentanyl-laced heroin are responsible for thousands of
opioid-related deaths in the United States each year.”
DEA warns of counterfeit prescription pills from Mexico
100

101

Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Group
Member, Global Commission On Drug Policy
Supports the Portugal Model
“As a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, I have for
years argued that the so-called war on drugs has been a costly failure
that has achieved nothing to make societies and communities safer.
Instead, millions have been needlessly criminalized, while illegal drugs
are more readily available than ever before and tens of thousands
continue to die year after year.
Whether it’s the dramatic toll of North America’s ongoing opioid crisis
or the reckless wave of extrajudicial killings in the name of the drug
war initiated and encouraged by President Duterte of the Philippines –
the suffering continues, the flow of drugs shows no sign of slowing
down, and the illicit trade keeps growing, worth more than $300
billion per year globally.”
Read More From Richard Branson
102

Drug Overdose Deaths
2018 USA
68,000
2016 TURKEY
941
2016 GERMANY
1272
2016 SPAIN
483
2016 FRANCE
373
2016 ENGLAND
3256
2017 PORTUGAL
38
2018 PORTUGAL
34
2016 PORTUGAL
30
2015 PORTUGAL
52
2014 PORTUGAL
36
2013 PORTUGAL
28
2012 PORTUGAL
16
2011 PORTUGAL
10
2010 PORTUGAL
27
2009 PORTUGAL
28
2008 PORTUGAL
20
2007 PORTUGAL
13
0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000 80000
Content source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

600
HIV DEATHS
500
500
400
300
200
100
0
2006
Portugal
18
2016
Portugal
115
43
105
2016 England2016 France 2016
Spain
Source: COAT Community Overdose Action Team
6,000 Americans died from
HIV/Aids in 2018

World Incarceration Rates
Rates calculated per 100,000 people
China
Spain
Portugal
England
Mexico
Singapore
Colombia
Chile
Uruguay
Brazil
Costa Rica
Panama
Russian Federation
Rwanda
Thailand
Cuba
Turkmenistan
El Salvador
USA
118
126
129
141
165
201
226
233
321
325
374
390
413
434
483
510
583
614
698
0 200 400 600 800
107

COMPARING MICHIGAN, NEW JERSEY, OKLAHOMA
AND FOUNDING NATO COUNTRIES
Oklahoma
1079
USA
Michigan
698
698
New Jersey
407
United Kingdom
Portugal
Luxembourg
Canada
France
Italy
Belgium
Norway
Denmark
Netherlands
Iceland
139
129
115
114
102
96
94
74
59
59
38
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200
Incarceration rates per 100,000 population
Incarceration rates
108

Drug Overdose Deaths CDC 2018 - 67,367 In 2018, 67,367 drug overdose deaths
occurred in the United States. The age-adjusted rate of overdose deaths decreased by
4.6% from 2017 (21.7 per 100,000) to 2018 (20.7 per 100,000). Opioids—mainly
synthetic opioids (other than methadone)—are currently the main driver of drug
overdose deaths. Opioids were involved in 46,802 overdose deaths in 2018 (69.5% of all
drug overdose deaths).
Two out of three (67.0%) opioid-involved overdose deaths involve synthetic opioids.
In 2018, the states with the highest rates of death due to drug overdose were West
Virginia (51.5 per 100,000), Delaware (43.8 per 100,000), Maryland (37.2 per 100,000),
Pennsylvania (36.1 per 100,000), Ohio (35.9 per 100,000), and New Hampshire (35.8 per
100,000). Numbers may be under reported.
109

R
110

111

RECLASSIFY.ORG
IT'S TIME TO DEFELONIZE DRUG POSSESSION
Global Recovery Movement is all about moving the
discrimination of the criminal justice approach to substance
use towards a proven public health solution. But many states
are not quite ready to do that. A politically diverse group of
states have opted for an incremental but substantive move in
that direction by reclassifying drug possession from a felony to
a misdemeanor and some have even allowed for an expedited
process to expunge past felony drug conviction convictions.
Maybe reclassifying drug charges is the right approach now
for your state. For more see reclassify.org.
112

Six big things reclassifying possession of drugs from a felony to
a misdemeanor can do:
1) Save taxpayer dollars
2) Safely reduce incarceration
3) Invest in alternatives to prison, including drug treatment
4) Keep families together
5) Improve police-community relations
6) Let people work in jobs they're best at, improving the local tax base
Six states that cover the widest political spectrum have already
reclassified drug possession:
Utah, Connecticut, Oklahoma, California, Alaska, and Colorado.
All these states' reclassification laws are a little different.
Oklahoma, for example, made their law retroactive to include an
expedited expungement process that would erase most long ago simple
drug possession convictions. Virginia can learn from those state's
experiences in crafting a bill that best suits the needs of Virginia.
People that are working in jobs that they are best qualified at earn more
money, pay more taxes, are less likely to engage in criminal activity, are
more likely to develop healthy relationships, marry, and have stable
families with happy children.
People that are unable to find work or housing, locked out of student
aid, are more likely to be in poor health are going to see illegal means
of earning any money as their only choice in spite of the risks.
People that have an income and a place to live are FAR less likely to
commit crimes. It is not in our own best interest to perpetuate these
scenarios.
113

All this is in the face of mounting research that incarceration isn’t
an effective response to drug abuse. A Pew Charitable Trusts study
found no significant relationship between rates of imprisonment for
drug offenses and rates of drug use, overdose deaths, or drug arrests.
Yet we spend billions of dollars on prisons, thinking it is.
1. 3-min summary of what happens when states defelonize drugs.
https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/what-happens-when-statesdefelonize-drug-possession
2. Detailed analysis of reclassification of drug possession laws.
Includes a summary of each state that has implemented such policies.
https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/99077/reclassified
_state_drug_law_reforms_to_reduce_felony_convictions_and_increase_
second_chances.pdf
3. The analysis found no statistically significant relationship
between state drug imprisonment rates and three indicators of state
drug problems: self-reported drug use, drug overdose deaths, and drug
arrests.
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issuebriefs/2018/03/more-imprisonment-does-not-reduce-state-drugproblems
4. Excerpt: "Making the reforms in State Question 780 retroactive not
only upholds the will of the people, the voters of our state, but it
also opens up a lot of opportunities for individuals who have that
scarlet letter hanging around their neck to have that removed and it
affords those individuals the opportunity to move forward in life in a
very healthy and positive way.“
https://oklahoman.com/article/5632525/governor-signs-legislation-tomake-state-question-780-retroactivebrgovernor
114

5. Excerpt: 1-minute video of a Dad telling about his son that got a
felony record for drug possession which prevented him from getting a
job which tore him up. He got clean but relapsed and died of an
overdose. This is from OH but I'm sure there are similar stories here
in VA.
CLICK TO WATCH VIDEO
115

Drug Policy In Portugal

The Portugal Model Bible - How It works.
Guidelines for the Intervention in Dissuasion
117

118

119

120

121

122

(Continued)
"Erick was sentenced to 2 1/2
years in prison for relapsing.
"Should relapsing be a crime?"
123

Why We Need The Portugal Model
End the War on
Drugs for Good
| Christina Dent |
TEDxJackson
End the war on Drugs for good
124

The Portugal
Model Works!
THE MAN WHO HELPED PORTUGAL FIX THEIR
DRUG PROBLEM INSPIRED CITIZEN AND DR. JOÃO
GOULÃO
https://youtu.be/mDQu0x0EM3M
Portugal Solved Its Drug Crisis. Why Can’t
America Do The Same?
When 1% of its population was caught in
the grips of a heroin epidemic, Portugal
took the radical step to decriminalize
drugs. It worked.
Portugal Solved Its Drug Crisis. Why Can’t America Do The Same?
“Nowadays we have the lowest rates of
overdose deaths in Europe,” said Dr João
Goulão. “We had 38 deaths in 2017, a
country of 10 million inhabitants. If you
had the same rate of overdoses [here in
Rhode Island], you should have three or
four a year, and you are having 300.”
A victory in the war on drugs may now
be exported from Europe to America
Between 1995 and 2019, the estimated
number of addicts fell from 100,000 to 50,000,
of whom 30,000 are receiving treatment
Dr Goulão went on to become Portugal’s drugs tsar
Dr João Goulão, architect of Portugal’s drug policy
https://youtu.be/XV82AgxqEJo
125

"The Portugal Love Song"
We Need To Learn It
Everything you think you know about
addiction is wrong | Johann Hari
https://youtu.be/PY9DcIMGxMs
Harm Reduction as an
Act of Compassion
| Lyndsay Hartman |
TEDx North Central College
https://youtu.be/sUgxnYEA8F0
Addiction specialist and author Gabor
Maté says dealing with past Trauma
may be the key to breaking addiction.
He says: “Addiction is not a choice
anybody makes, it’s a response to
emotional pain.”
https://youtu.be/tI104at2iqs
126

The Portugal Flip
In The Works
Here's how prosecution of drug
charges is treated differently
in Orange County
District Judge Samantha Cabe
Harm Reduction, New Haven Police
Department, Opioid Addiction
'You're Not Going To Arrest Your
Way Out Of Addiction': Sarasota
Jail Program Emphasizes Recovery
Cops Offer Addicts Clean Needles, Pipes
Sarasota Jail Program Emphasizes Recovery
An alternative to police: Mental
health team responds to
emergencies in Oregon
CAHOOTS, which stands for Crisis Assistance
Helping Out On The Streets.
Emily Ligawiec (right) and Officer John Cacela take
weekly pottery classes together in Ware, Mass. Rather
than arrest Ligawiec last winter when she took heroin
and stole her mom's car, he offered her help.
Karen Brown/New England Public Radio
Police Offering Drug Recovery Help: 'We
Can't Arrest Our Way Out Of This Problem'
127

(Continued)
SURROUND PEOPLE WITH SERVICES!
This is exactly what Portugal did. They put the
services in place and then stopped arresting users.
They send the users before a dissuasion panel and
directly into their primary care system if they
choose to go. No forcing anyone into treatment.
Opinion: Alberta could become a
leader in treating addictions
More people than ever are dying from
opioid overdoses. But not in Miami-
Dade.
Young people are hardest hit by this
rise in overdose mortality.
GO COLORADO! COLORADO DOES THE PORTUGAL
FLIP!! NO MORE LOCKING UP USERS FOR
POSSESSION!
NO MORE FELONY RECORDS! RI, SEATTLE AND
COLORADO WILL BE THE FIST TO WIN THE WAR ON
DRUGS! HALLELUJAH!
“Getting busted with schedule I or II substances, won’t
get you thrown in jail in Colorado anymore; you won’t be
charged with a felony; your future opportunities won’t
be stripped and your record won’t be forever stained
just because the fuzz found a little somethin’ somethin’
in your pocket…”
Happy Defelonization, Colorado! Schedule
1, 2 drugs officially “defelonized” and
penalties for possession lowered in the
Centennial State
Oregon Could Become
The first State To
Decriminalize Drugs
oregon-drug-decriminalizationinitiative
Oregon Activists Collect Enough Signatures
For Drug Decriminalization
And Treatment Measure
Activists in Oregon have collected more than the
required raw number of signatures to qualify a
historic initiative to decriminalize drug possession
and increase access to treatment for the state’s
November ballot.
128

Florida House Passes
Needle Exchange Bill
Dr. Hansel Tookes has been pushing for needle exchange access in Florida for years.
Originally published on April 19, 2019 11:39 am
The Florida Legislature has approved a bill that will allow the expansion of
needle exchanges throughout Florida.
The Infectious Disease Elimination Programs bill—which passed a house vote
on Wednesday and has already passed in the Florida Senate—creates a legal
mechanism for counties to authorize programs that swap clean syringes for
dirty ones. Needle exchanges have been shown to reduce the spread of blood
borne infections—like HIV and hepatitis C—among intravenous drug users.
129

(Continued)
The bill was modeled on the IDEA Exchange in Miami-Dade County, which was
given a five-year trial approval by the legislature in 2016. In the three years it's
been around, the IDEA Exchange has reported to the health department that
it's pulled more than a quarter million used needles out of circulation. It hands
out Narcan (the drug that reverses opioid overdoses)—and, according to the
exchange, making this drug available has prevented more than a thousand
overdoses. The program also offers testing for HIV and hepatitis C, and it
connects people to medical care and drug rehab.
"It was very, very emotional," said Dr. Hansel Tookes, who has been advocating
for needle exchange access in Florida since he was a medical student at the
University of Miami. He's now head of Miami's IDEA Exchange. Tookes
travelled to Tallahassee for the vote, which happened late Wednesday night.
"We'd been waiting for 10 hours. And finally the bill came up and there was
nothing but love and compassion," he said.
Historically, the distribution of needles without prescriptions violated drug
paraphernalia possession laws as interpreted in Florida—the Infectious
Disease Elimination Programs bill creates clear guidelines for doing so legally
as a public health intervention.
The final language of the bill will need to be reconciled between the House
and Senate before heading to the governor's desk. The House version of the
bill bars state and municipal funds from being spent on needle exchanges. The
Senate version bans only the use of state funds.Florida Legislature has
approved a bill that will allow the expansion of needle exchanges throughout
Florida.
The Infectious Disease Elimination Programs bill—which passed a house vote
on Wednesday and has already passed in the Florida Senate—creates a legal
mechanism for counties to authorize programs that swap clean syringes for
dirty ones. Needle exchanges have been shown to reduce the spread of blood
borne infections—like HIV and hepatitis C—among intravenous drug users.
health.wusf.usf.edu/post/florida-house-passes-needle-exchange
130

Daphne Bramham: Decriminalization is no
silver bullet, says Portugal's drug czar
LISBON, Portugal — Almost every day,
foreigners knock on João Goulão’s door seeking
a solution to their countries’ drug addiction
problems.
A Seven-Step Plan for Ending
the Opioid Crisis
More treatment. Stronger oversight.
And above all, bolder leadership.
We must stop doctors from overprescribing
opioids, especially when nonaddictive
pain medications (such as
ibuprofen or acetaminophen) would be
just as effective.
131

132

VERMONT WINS FIRST PLACE IN REDUCING
OVERDOSE DEATHS IN THE USA!
REDUCED BY 25% PRE - COVID.
HOW DID THEY DO IT?
LOWERED BARRIERS TO PRESCRIBING
BUPRENORPHINE FOR WITHDRAWAL AND
CRAVINGS, POLICE REFERRING AND TAKING
PEOPLE TO TREATMENT AND NARCAN
EVERYWHERE!
133

“This video should be seen by every high school
student in our country. It warns about FENTANYL!”
Grieving Mom, Dr. Kimberly Blake tells her story of her beloved son,
Shawn. Tears.
vermont and the opioid epidemic - CLICK to watch Video
134

135

https://www.mccoat.org/structure-leadership
136

"Dayton Is Our Portugal"
DAYTON, OHIO BRAVO! MONTGOMERY CO.
OD Deaths
600
566
500
400
300
289 288
200
100
0
2017 2018 2019
Source: COAT Community Overdose Action Team
HOW DAYTON, MONTGOMERY CO TOOK NUMBERS DOWN BY 50%
https://www.mccoat.org/data-reports?fbclid=IwAR0I8dENedLUMPr3gEidKAa9jYH3KhWYWIqW0zD1kK1C9JGEmwsxFBo8s9E
137

Dayton Was Our Opioid Overdose Capital
- 15 Overdoses A Day Down to 3 –
Dayton Recovers!
At This Camp, Children Of
Opioid Addicts Learn To Cope
And Laugh
Two 12-year-olds comfort each other
while sharing stories about their
families. Some say it's only at camp that
they don't feel alone because they
meet other children in their situation.
Some children have seen their parents
overdose and some have had to call
911. Many have been taken away to
foster care multiple times.
Courtesy of Jared Case
Children Of Opioid Addicts Learn To
Cope And Laugh
This City’s Overdose
Deaths Have Plunged. Can
Others Learn From It?
Dayton, Ohio, had one of
the highest overdose death
rates in the nation in 2017.
The city made many
changes, and fatal
overdoses are down more
than 50 percent from last
year.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/25/health/opioidoverdose-dead
138

Harm Reduction Ohio estimates, based
on preliminary mortality data, that
overdose deaths increased about 29.5%
in the first six months of 2020 versus the
same period in 2019. The following chart
shows how the number of overdose
deaths has changed in Ohio since 2013.
What’s causing overdose death in Ohio?
Let’s be honest: drug prohibition is the
cause. Prohibition kills. Always has,
always will, is doing so right now.
139

140

Dayton, OH September 2019
141

142

143

144

Portugal’s answer to the heroin crisis
Mayor Durkan's proposed budget
sets aside $1.3 million for
legal injection site
SEATTLE -- Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan released
Monday's proposed budget and the amount of
money set aside for a legal injection site for drug
users is raising some serious eyebrows.
The mayor says her proposed budget will set
aside $1.3 million dollars for the pilot program.
Mayor Durkan's proposed budget
81
Why Philadelphia is looking to
Europe for help with America’s
worst big-city drug epidemic.
“Across Lisbon, health workers in such vans
dispense the treatment every day, for free, to
nearly 1,200 people. It’s part of what is perhaps
the world’s most radical drug policy — one
instituted amid a heroin crisis not unlike the one
gripping Philadelphia and the United States.
After years of mounting overdoses, HIV
infections and rampant heroin addiction,
Portugal opted in 2001 for a daring experiment:
The country decriminalized the use of all drugs.”
Portugal’s answer to the heroin crisis
Philly DA Larry Krasner will no longer prosecute
people for possession of an addiction
treatment drug
Philly DA Larry Krasner
145

How Philly plans to combat the
nation’s worst big-city opioid
crisis in 2020
Philadelphia is home to the worst urban opioid crisis
in America. More than 3,000 people have died of
drug overdoses here in the last three years, and the
city health department estimates that tens of
thousands of Philadelphians are addicted to opioids.
Opioid Crisis in 2020
Syringe exchange saved billions in
HIV-related costs in Philadelphia,
study finds
Needles are bundled in tens for
Philadelphia's Prevention Point's exchange
program. (Emma Lee/WHYY)
HIV prevention efforts are often focused on
changing individual behavior: Use condoms; don’t
share needles. But the way people behave depends
on environmental factors, too, like the availability
of contraception or clean needles.
Syringe exchange
Ten years ago, OxyContin sales dominated
Philly’s pharmacies. How the powerful
painkiller helped fuel a crisis.
Inquirer analysis of recently unsealed federal data
shows a third of the region’s supply of the drug was
likely abused
OxyContin Sales
146

147

February 1, 2021
MOST HISTORIC DAY IN
USA DRUG POLICY
OREGON 110 BEGINS TO
STOP ARRESTING USERS FOR
POSSESSION OF SMALL
AMOUNTS AND GET THEM
TREATMENT!
JUST LIKE THE
PORTUGAL MODEL!
148

We’re Making History - the Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act
makes the 2020 ballot in Oregon!
The Oregon Secretary of State has confirmed that our partners in Oregon
have more than enough signatures for The Drug Addiction Treatment and
Recovery Act to make it on the November ballot.
This groundbreaking measure imagines a better way forward - instead of
arresting and jailing people for drugs, it will offer help to those who need
and want it. In this moment of a pandemic and collective action against
systemic racism, drug policy reform is more urgent than ever.
Simple drug possession is the single most arrested offense in the country.
Policing and enforcement of the drug war has always been racially
targeted, with a particularly cruel impact on generations of Black, Latinx,
and Indigenous people. And incarceration is also a dangerous
vulnerability in the fight against COVID-19 – for people in jails and prisons
and in the surrounding community.
If approved in November, this measure would decriminalize simple drug
possession and expand access across the state to drug treatment and
health services, paid for with a portion of taxes from legal marijuana
sales.
Victory in Oregon can reverberate across the nation and demonstrate
that effective, compassionate alternatives to arrest, prosecution, and
incarceration are indeed possible.
Help us build an alternative where we eliminate drugs as an excuse for
excessive policing and punishment, and redirect resources to services
that support people and save lives
Oregon Could Become The First State To Decriminalize Drugs
149

“By following public health models rolled out in Portugal,
Switzerland, and the Netherlands, Oregon is spearheading
a new attempt to improve the ongoing opioid epidemic.
Oregon has particularly high rates of substance abuse and
mental health disorders, which is only complicated further
by limited access to treatment when compared to the rest
of the country.”
CLICK:
www.thesoberworld.com/2020/12
/01/new-oregon-drug-policy
150

By Amelia Templeton (OPB)
Nov. 3, 2020 11:11 p.m.
Updated: Nov. 4, 2020
CLICK TO READ ARTICLE
By following public health models rolled out in
Portugal, Switzerland, and the Netherlands,
Oregon is spearheading a new attempt to
improve the ongoing opioid epidemic.
151

152

The Architect of The Portugal Model - Dr. Jao Goulao visits Rhode
Island, Feb. 11, 2019
“Nowadays we have the lowest rates of overdose deaths in Europe,”
said Dr João Goulão. “We had 38 deaths in 2017, a country of 10
million inhabitants. If you had the same rate of overdoses [here in
Rhode Island], you should have three or four a year, and you are
having 300.”
__________________________________________________________
Dr João Goulão is credited as being an architect of Portugal‘s drug
policy. Established in 2000, this revolutionary drug policy maintains the
illegality of using or possessing any drugs for personal use without
authorization, but the offense was no longer criminal but
administrative if the amount possessed was no more than a ten-day
supply. Substance use is seen as a health issue in Portugal, not a
criminal issue.
And the results have been extraordinary.
Dr Goulão was in Providence on Thursday, visiting the Rhode Island
State House at the invitation of State Representative Scott Slater
(Democrat, District 10, Providence) to talk about Portugal’s drug policy.
Slater introduced legislation last session to reclassify possession from a
felony to a two year misdemeanor, and plans to reintroduce the bill this
year. Other States that have done this, including Connecticut, have seen
great successes in terms of supporting people in recovery.
Dr João Goulão, architect of Portugal’s drug policy,
shares his success with the General Assembly
153

154

THE 1% LIE
BY PURDUE
PHARMA AND THE
SACKLER FAMILY
THAT OXYCONTIN
WAS 1%
ADDICTIVE
155

www.amazon.com/Pharma-Greed-Lies-Poisoning-America
156

Purdue Pharma Did This. Purdue Said Oxycontin
was 1% Addictive. That LIE Has Killed 800,000
Beloved Daugher's And Son's. The Sackler Family
Made Billions From The LIE.
Justin
Forever 26
157

McKinsey & Company, the consultant
to blue-chip corporations and
governments around the world, has
agreed to pay nearly $600 million to
settle investigations into its role in
helping “turbocharge” opioid sales, a
rare instance of it being held publicly
accountable for its work with clients.
By Michael Forsythe and Walt Bogdanich
Feb. 3, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/business/
mckinsey-opioids-settlement
158

How Purdue Pharma and The Sackler
Family created this man made epidemic in
1995. They bought doctors, dentists,
hospitals, the FDA and politicians. They
hired 600 sales reps making 100's of calls a
day. One parent says "his child's murderer
wore a lab coat." No child or young adult
should be given an opioid. It changes their
brain and leads them straight into
addiction and even death.
PURDUE PHARMA MARCH
159

Ryan Hampton & Cheryl Juaire at Smithsonian’s
National Museum of Asian Art
The Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian was built with
blood money. Last week, I confronted John Gibbons, the
Smithsonian's senior press secretary, and asked why the
museum refuses to return the money, rename the gallery,
and wash their hands of the family that fueled the
American opioid crisis. Do the right thing. Return the
money or invest it in solutions to end this crisis.
#PayUpPurdue #AmericaIsFEDUP
2018 FedUp Rally
NEEDLES IN THE HAY
This is how the epidemic started. A substantial
proportion of overall opioid exposure in young people
occurs in the dental setting! An icepack and Tylenol
are all that is needed. Cheaper than rehab too!!
Corrupted: Opioids
This is what happens when Congress is in bed
with Big Pharma and drug manufacturers...
Corrupted: Opioids
160

5 Insane Reasons America Is Losing
The War on Drugs
America’s War on Drugs is Evolving
Changes overdue on how
substance-use disorders are
covered, treated
NC DOES THE PORTUGAL FLIP The most stunning
statistic Kinsley offered, however, is that—in the
first two weeks after release from jail—people with
a SUD in North Carolina are 40 times more likely
than the general population to die, with an
overdose being the typical cause.
As Purdue Pharma Settles Lawsuits,
Families Feel Betrayed
“I think the companies and the families involved at
Purdue are a huge part of why the opioid crisis is
happening because back in the 90s they changed
the narrative,” Macy said. “We knew for millennia
that opioids were addictive, but through their
misbranding, they changed the narrative, and
made doctors and patients more comfortable with
taking opioids.”
https://pavementpieces.com/as-purduepharma-settles-lawsuits-families-feel-betrayed
“So, we literally say: ‘Thank you, you’ve done your
time, you’ve been adjudicated, ready to go, and
now you’re going to die,’” Kinsley said. “I cannot
believe we operate a system where there is any kind
of justice and that’s the outcome.”
On the positive side, Kinsley reported that North
Carolina has received a $6.5 million federal grant
that will be used to initiate SUD treatment for
people in jail.
“This is transformative for North Carolina,” he said.
“We’re going from two years ago having zero jailbased
treatment programs to—hopefully in the next
year—having 15.”
AMA Opioid Task Force
Seattle Starbucks baristas dispose of
hypodermic needles left behind by drug
users nearly every day: report
Starbucks baristas in Seattle have revealed they
have to dispose of hypodermic needles left behind
by drug users nearly every day.
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1. The Money Flip
We need the CARE Act to stop the opioid pandemic - STAT
How would flipping the system to the healthcare system for drug abuse
treatment be financed? Portugal pays for their successful program by
using their national lottery revenue. This method equates to immediate
care. No borrowing, no waiting and no charging the public. It is used
for an excellent cause.
When we choose to move addiction into the primary care system and
away from the criminal justice system, the money would flip directly to
treatment and not jail. Again, pushing for immediate care and not
prolonged agony in a jail cell without treatment.
Perhaps, we should consider the CARE Act, which calls for $100 Billion
over 10 years. This act was modeled after the Ryan White
Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act of 1990. However, it has
tragically not been alloted yet and remains stalled in Committee for
more than two years while 200 Americans continue to die every day.
Now, the deaths are rising because of Covid-19. If the Care Act becomes
law, every single person would get the help they need according to the
bill's sponsors, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Elijah Cummings.
Another option to explore is the Minnesota Opiate Epidemic Response
Bill - HF No. 400. : Minnesota Opiate Epidemic Response Bill - HF No.
400. A part of this bill charges Big Pharma a small licensing fee to sell
and distribute opioids in the state. Minnesota will receive a projected
$25 million every year for treatment, recovery and child services.
Brilliant!
163

OREGON
This November, Oregon voted on redirecting most recreational tax
revenue to pay for drug abuse treatment.
(Continued)
The measure also funds health assessments, addiction treatment, harmreduction
efforts and other services for people with addiction disorders.
Funding those programs will come through the reallocation of tens of
millions of dollars generated by Oregon’s cannabis tax. The measure also
is expected to generate savings in the criminal justice system because of
fewer drug arrests, prosecutions and incarcerations. Those savings
would be redirected into a new state fund for treatment and other
services. Another great option.
How Much Does The Opioid Epidemic Cost?
Ryan Hampton says it best in his June 13, 2019 Op Ed in STAT News
(https://www.statnews.com/2019/06/13/warren-cummings-care-actopioids/)
If $100 billion sounds expensive, compare that with the cost of
not dealing with the crisis head-on. The president’s Council of Economic
Advisers estimates that the opioid crisis cost $504 billion in 2015, alone.
A new study in the journal, estimates that the federal government lost
$26 billion in tax revenue between 2000 and 2016 because of adverse
effects on the labor market due to opioid misuse. Every $1 invested in
addiction recovery treatment yields $7 in return. Although taking on the
epidemic may be costly at first, it will yield big dividends for our
economy — but only if we address every aspect of addiction, from the
individual who struggles with substance use disorder to the policies
signed into law by our elected leaders.
164

(Continued)
Biden's Opioid Epidemic Plan:
$125 billion in funds. Some would come from higher
taxes on pharmaceutical companies’ profits.
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Elizabeth Warren’s $100 billion plan to
fight the opioid epidemic, explained
Warren’s plan is the most ambitious attempt to tackle the
opioid crisis, experts and advocates say.
Elizabeth Warren at a campaign event in NYC in March 2019. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Wednesday rolled out what advocates and experts
say is the most ambitious federal proposal to tackle the opioid epidemic — the latest
of many policy proposals from Warren’s presidential campaign.
The proposal, an updated version of the CARE Act that Warren and Rep. Elijah
Cummings (D-MD) previously introduced in Congress, would allocate $100 billion over
10 years to fight the opioid crisis, which is now the nation’s deadliest drug overdose
epidemic in US history. That matches the level of spending experts have long said is
necessary to make a serious dent in the crisis and reverse it.
The bill “is the only one that really grasps the nettle of how big the problem is,” Keith
Humphreys, a drug policy expert at Stanford University, previously told me, on the
CARE Act. “Whatever else people might say about it, this is the first thing that really
recognizes that [the opioid crisis] is a massive public health problem, like AIDS, and is
not going to be solved by a tweak here, a tweak there.”
Elizabeth Warren opioid-epidemic-2020
166

Big Pharma Pays To Play In Minnesota
25 Million A Year Forever
Opioid
Response Bill
MN HF400
Minnesota will receive 25 ML every year forever just by charging opioid
distributors and makers a licensing fee to do business in their state. Trust us
it is nothing compared to what they have and the damage and death they
leave behind!
www.billtrack50.com
How Drug Use Affects Our Society and Costs
By Buddy T, Medically reviewed by Steven Gans, MD, Updated 4/21/20
www.verywellmind.com/what-are-the-costs-of-drug-abuse-to-society
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168

Carol Egan - NJ/GA, CT AG Tong,
Fernando Alvarez - CT
John Shinholser & Carol McDaid – VA
McShin Foundation Founders
Donna Mazurek - MI
Elba Guzman - PR
169

Dan Schneider, - LA
The Pharmacist from the Netflix Series
Lou Filler - NJ
Jennifer Healy - MA
Robert Legge - VA
Andrea Wright - VA
Debi Nadler, NV
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171

The winner of Paige’s Promise Poster Contest
to end the stigma!
Delaney Cronk
Graduated from Grant High School
Class of 2020
Delaney lives in Grant, MI.
“It was a joy to use my talent to bring
attention to a worthy cause, like the
Opioid Epidemic.” – Delany Cronk
172

This is Purdue Watchdog Donna Mazurek
with her beautiful daughter Paige. Donna
Represents Michigan. Donna is the Co -
Founder of Purdue Watchdogs. A National
Coalition Against Opioids. In all my years
of this work, I have never met a kinder,
gentler woman or man than Donna. She is
a woman of faith and has MS. She is
building a huge team in Michigan. She has
recruited documentary film maker Brett
Meyer (Needles In The Hay,) Judge Jodi
Debbrecht Switalski, A Pastor, Mom's,
Dad's and others to make a difference. She
is on this 24/7. She never misses a
moment. I met Donna at The March To
Purdue Pharma. She had a beautiful
poster with her organization's name
"Paige's Promise" on it. There was a
beautiful pic of Paige sticking her tongue
out and in her coffin. Paige was 22 when
she overdosed and died from heroin laced
with fentanyl. Her addiction began with
painkillers prescribed by a dentist. So
many Mom's and Dad's have this story.
Their kids turn to heroin because one
Oxycontin pill can be $60 on the street.
Heroin is so much cheaper.
I had the honor of carrying Paige's photos
to The White House March on Oct. 7,
2018, Paige was forever 22. My daughter,
Darragh was 21 when she carried Paige’s
poster. She cried when we made the
poster. Darragh and her friend's have no
idea about this epidemic and how it
happened. We need to warn them every
single day! It opened her eyes and her
friend's eyes, who helped us. Donna is a
force of nature!
Paige Mazurek
7/11/92 - 3/30/15
Forever 22 173

CAROL EGAN AND
DONNA MAZUREK
AT HARVARD 2019
174

On our Memorial in Savannah for Slavery at the
River where the slaves landed and were sold. I
looked down and saw purple flowers. And they are
our color of deep purple. The hands are in prayer.
One is a man's hand and one is a woman's hand.
There is hope when you look. I can feel it. The
Purdue Watchdogs are working on planting
800,000 Angel Trees as Memorials for those
victims lost to the opioid epidemic.
Nate's Mom speaking in DC at
The Sackler Gallery.
Lauren Cereghini Gergle.
A HERO BRAVE HEART AND AVID
WATCHDOG! PROUD!
Protest at Purdue Pharma Stamford, CT
August 18, 2018
Moms Rebecca Finnerty and
Lou Filler the voices for
their sons Justin and Benjamin. 175

September 2019
176

Darragh Egan asking the U.S. President to,
“BUILD The WALL AROUND
PURDUE PHARMA!”
in front of the White House.
177

GO FLORIDA!! GO CINDY DODDS!!
NEEDLE EXCHANGES ALL OVER FLORIDA!! MOM POWER!!
“On my way home. The Bill passed the House at about 9:30 last night.
The Senate will vote on an amended Bill next week, but in truth, they
already approved the Bill. It was an emotional time as we moms were
recognized. Sure doesn’t bring our children back or replace our lost years
and futures with our precious kids, but helping feels really good.”
https://www.facebook.com/cindy.dodds
“If I had words to say, I would use them,
but the tears that are flowing just will
not allow me to express how much I wish
these angels had been there for our Kyle.
America is waking up to the jetliner with
200 aboard that crashes every single day.
The number of overdose deaths every
single day in America. How long can we
sustain this?”
https://www.statnews.com/2019/08/3
0/recovery-coaches-substance-use/
178

CINDY DODDS UNWELCOMING THE
SACKLER’S TO WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA!
www.facebook.com/carolannegan
179

SEPTEMBER 2019
180

A Gallery Owner Was Arrested
After Leaving a 10-Foot Heroin
Spoon Sculpture Outside
OxyContin Maker Purdue Pharma
“Fernando Luis Alvarez, who owned Stamford’s
Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery, was charged with a
criminal misdemeanor and a felony after leaving the
roughly 800-pound piece, which was hand-made by
Boston-based artist Domenic Esposito, in Purdue’s
driveway and refusing to remove it, the
Hartford Courant reports.
Alvarez told TIME that the stunt — which coincided
with an opioid-related show at his gallery — was meant
to send a message to Purdue Pharma and to hold the
company accountable for what he says are its
contributions to the country’s opioid epidemic.”
Fernando Luis Alvarez Purdue Pharma
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188

Marina Richards
October 17, 2019
EVERY day a family is shattered.

Ryan
Troy
Tripp
It mind boggling to me that Treatment for Addiction in the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts still can be a nightmare ,, from finding a open detox bed , to the lack
of TSS and CSS , Opiate addiction should have a longer period of Treatment covered
by both State and private insurance..
Vivitrol and other types of Recovery aids should be more available as well ,, ..
I see how the Field Hospitals are popping up so quickly for the Corona Virus ,, I
didn't see 1 of these go up for the Opiate Epidemic..
I understand that if You have tested positive for the Corona Virus , your medical bills
are covered by the Government ,, I see that the Governor is utilizing the National
Guard to Help fight the Corona Virus , yet again nothing for the 2,000
Massachusetts residents who succumbed to the Opioid Epidemic Each n Every Year
here in Massachusetts .
I see lots of things that Our Governor Baker Fails to see , I see someone who
doesn't value A Generation that is Dying and continues to slowly disappear from
this Earth without any type of Urgency !!!
I see Pain in the Families and Friends that Love them and miss Them ,, the
Heartache of the Children left behind ...
These things I have seen , these are things I cannot forget ,,

191

The Purdue Watchdogs are
working on planting one
tree for each loved one
lost. The Memorial Trees
will be called
Rooting For Recovery.
192

Silent Screams click for video
193

Our First
Memorial Tree
Morris County Department
of Human Services
Morristown, NJ
Certificate: 001
194

FIRST MEMORIAL TREE DEDICATION OVERDOSE MEMORIAL DAY, AUGUST
31, 2020 IN MORRIS COUNTY, NJ. FIRST MEMORIAL TREE DEDICATION.
SENATOR ANTHONY BUCCO - "WHEN IS ENOUGH ENOUGH"
Enough is enough,
click for video
195

For Immediate Release
Contact: Carol Egan
The Global Recovery Movement
Rooting For Recovery
973.713.4905
carol.egan@gmail.com
(Morris County, New Jersey, Aug. 24, 2020) - A memorial tree planting and dedication is on the
agenda for the International Overdose Awareness Day event slated for Monday, Aug. 31, 2020, at
10 a.m, at the Morris County Dept. of Human Services, One Medical Drive in Morris Plains. The
memorial tree will serve as a perpetual memorial to all of the angels of New Jersey that have died
from drug overdoses, their grieving loved ones and will serve as encouraging those continuing to
fight for recovery.
While the overall theme of the day is to raise awareness of overdose and to reduce the stigma of
drug-related deaths, the tree planting kicks off the nationwide efforts of the Rooting for Recovery
campaign, led by The Global Recovery Movement.
“This inaugural tree planting in Morris County is the first of what we hope grows to thousands
nationwide plantings,” says Carol Egan, a co-founder of The Global Recovery Movement. As a
former resident who grew up in Morris County, I am grateful to Senator Anthony Bucco, Sheriff
James Gannon and the Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders for observing this special day
and helping to fight the overdose stigma. Their support and willingness to host the first Rooting
for Recovery tree to be planted solidifies this County’s unification against the drug epidemic and
the hope for recovery,” she added.
“Everyone knows families of loss. It is time we support them and show them we care. This is a
man-made epidemic and not their fault or their children's fault. By letting grieving loved ones
know we support them by way of these symbolic angel trees, we are helping to reduce the shame
and eliminate the stigma surrounding deaths by overdose,” Egan adds.
The event is sponsored by the Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders, The Global Recovery
Movement, the Drug Epidemic Awareness Walk Across America and the Morris County Municipal
Alliances.
About The Global Recovery Movement
To flip the discrimination of substance misuse towards a proven public health solution. We are
dedicated to drug proofing our communities. (Treatment Not Jail)
196

197

260 Mom's
Will Get
Sculpture by Yari Montes
The Call On
Mother's Day
198

199

https://www.amazon.com/American-Fix-Inside-Opioid-Addiction
200

"To end the overdose crisis in this
country, we must end America's
racist War on Drugs. To do this, we must
focus on a community-based approach
that takes addiction out of the criminal
justice system and meets people where
they're at. We must re-shift our budget
focus to getting people help, not locking
them up." -Ryan Hampton
201

“I believe we can greatly reduce our
overdose deaths if we ‘Do The USA FLIP’.
We must stop piling it on and making it
worse with records and fines. I believe in
treatment not jail“. - Dan Schneider, The Pharmacist
from The Netflix Series
202

“The simplest solution to reducing the
impact addiction,(substance use disorders)
has on our society is to end the “drug war”.
The United States should mirror Portugal’s
drug policies, combine this action with fully
funding authentic recovery supports and
mental health and we become world
leaders!” - John Shinholser, McShin Recovery Resource
Foundation
203

“We need something dramatic to flip the opioid
epidemic. We were hoping demanding accountability
from the architects of this epidemic would create some
change, but the reality is that our U.S. justice system
doesn’t punish these companies correctly. Otherwise,
epidemics would not continue to develop every 15 – 25
years.
So, I’m banking on the USA Flip to be that change, as it
seeks to completely flip addiction from the criminal
alliances in every town in America with SACs (Student
Assistance Counselors in our schools from grades K-12
to reach our at-risk students).
I also believe in flipping the funding, as well. It boils
down to better math – paying a corrections officer from
a private company is a system that works for that
private sector, but not for society. We should, instead,
direct these individuals to social workers or peer
counselors/recovery coaches, instead of correction
officers. They are not criminals and that’s where our
system also fails.” –Fernando Luis Alvarez, Founder Of The
Spoon Movement
204

Fernando Luis Alvarez
Founder Of The Spoon Movement
205

“The War on Drugs is Dead. It failed and yet some systems
continue to treat people who present in the criminal justice
system with diseases of mental health and substance use
disorders using punitive methods that perpetuate the failed
experiment. In order to stem the tide of the opioid epidemic
and other similar diseases, we must think outside of the box
– or FLIP – the way we proceed! In order to reduce crime,
take advantage of the OPPORTUNITY to intervene WITH
the individual providing a myriad of continued opportunities
to succeed and for the treatment plan to take hold. This
requires evidence based approaches that have proven
success. This requires law enforcement, judges, probation
officers, prosecutors and more to truly understand and
embrace the medical model of addiction. It requires ALL OF
US to vote for and empower candidates in office who are
brave and bold enough to reform the “one tough” approach
and embrace the therapeutic model. Together, we can be
tough on crime while using smart justice initiatives – in
doing so, we protect the public, maintain accountability, and
increase positive outcomes for everyone. Incarceration of
people who suffer or are disenfranchised didn’t work then
and it is not working now.” – Jodi Switalski, Former Drug
Court Judge
206

Jodi Switalski
Former Drug Court Judge
207

Email us at: info@grmovement.org
208

Written by Carol Egan
Founder and Chairwoman of
The Global Recovery Movement
and Purdue Watchdogs
Design and Graphics
by Angel Mom Lou Filler
Editing by Linda Colon
Copyrighted 2020
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