Woman jailed for treating addiction

I don't get the logic here. You have a woman who is addicted to Oxycotin to the point where she is charged with child abuse (I assume for neglect of some kind) and the judge orders her notto go to rehab because I guess he wants to punish her by taking away her methadone treatments?

When she appears in imminent danger of succumbing to addiction again, her doctor advises her to go back on the methadone therapy. She takes the doctor's advice and the judge puts her in jail for violating her probation. Keep in mind she was only charged with drug possession in the first place and she got in trouble because she was an addict. So she's sentenced to three years for trying to kick the habit with an accepted medical intervention?

The hell of it is that this is apparently not uncommon.

Mark Parrino, president of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence, said it's wrong for methadone patients to be sent to prison for a treatment that is aimed at helping them beat their addiction. "Despite the fact that the federal government has spent millions in research to determine that methadone is the gold standard for treating opioid dependence, you still have what I would call unenlightened and misinformed representatives of the law-enforcement community," Parrino said.

Unenlightened is an understatement. I call it Neanderthal. What are these people thinking?

Meanwhile the most enlightened community in this hemisphere, Vancouver, is beginning a pilot project looking at treatment options for opiate addictions. In the first North American study of its kind, "88 heroin-addicted individuals will receive prescribed heroin in combination with methadone, while 70 other heroin users will receive methadone only. Outcomes for both groups will be tracked and compared."