SOLUTION: Make incarceration an opportunity to get help and start healing. Make detox easier, get people with addiction drug treatment behind bars, and connect them to help as soon as they’re released.

STORY: Opioid withdrawal is like the worst flu you’ve ever had. Now, imagine you’re responsible for dozens of people as sick as can be. What do you do?

We tour the Snohomish County jail, which has become a defacto detox center and where inmates used to die from lack of medical care. The jail turned things around, and today they’re trying to make the jail a place of healing.

This season we’re in Snohomish County, Washington which has an oversized share of overdose deaths in the state and is now treating the opioid epidemic like a natural disaster.

MORE INFORMATION AND RESOURCES:

Snohomish County overdose and addiction treatment resource guide. http://snohomishoverdoseprevention.com/treatment-and-support/

An article on other jails across the country that use medication-assisted treatment do it too. http://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2017/08/08/sudders-med-assisted-opioid-treatment-jails

More about the Rhode Island prison system’s comprehensive approach to opioid use disorder, which helped decrease the state’s overdose death rate by 12 percent in one year. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304666

Research: Treating inmates’ addiction behind bars can be effective in helping them continue drug treatment after they’re released.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21955033

The National Institute on Drug Abuse presents evidence in support of using medication to treat inmates’ opioid addiction. https://www.drugabuse.gov/treating-opioid-addiction-in-criminal-justice-settings

Research: Detroit found heroin users spent about $60 dollars a day on average on drugs. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3115458/