It is not enough to discuss the Commonwealth’s substance abuse problem – we need to solve it. As your senator, I will champion efforts to change ill-conceived mandatory sentencing guidelines and fight to emphasize drug treatment and prevention. Every low-level offender sent to prison for a year costs taxpayers nearly $45,000. Sending that same person to treatment and giving them a year of probation would save taxpayers almost $20,000. This would save about $30 million annually – a win-win for the Commonwealth and for addicts who desperately need to change their lives.
We also need increased police and community involvement on these issues. I strongly support initiatives like the Detention Diversion Advocacy Project, an anti-crime and anti-gang partnership of state and community groups in Boston. We must also restore funding for the Shannon Community Safety Initiative-effective anti-gang grants that were slashed this past year. These multidisciplinary programs are absolutely essential to keeping our kids safe.
I know that these are pressing economic times and most people are concerned about losing their job, home or retirement. We have made progress on access the health care, but costs continue to soar. I also appreciate that there continues to be a need for ethics reform in government, and the public is justifiably concerned about the inaction at the state house despite the urgency of their needs. I promise to talk more about those matters later.
I also know there isn’t a silver bullet to solve the youth substance abuse problem, or any of the other serious issues we face. But I do know that no kid starts out life wanting to be an addict, and that’s reason enough for me to fight to make sure we do better. I hope you’ll join me.
Tim Flaherty
Silence = Death! Science must figure out how to allow people with addictive natures to use drugs safely. What we need is a Safe Drugs program in all of our schools, so that this tragedy never happens again.
Out here in rural areas, many kids are introduced to drugs in schools. I think there should be a wealth of effort directed at preventing kids from being introduced to drugs in schools. Another place you might not think would be a huge drug transfer station is the ride on the school bus. Especially since this is one place where older kids are placed with younger kids.
Thanks for pointing this out. Too often there is an assumption that drugs are just an inner-city problem, but there are people in every community who profit from addicted kids. It’s crucial to make sure that every child can learn in a safe space, and we should be doing more to keep the entire school day free from the pressures of drugs and alcohol. That includes bus rides and even time spent waiting at the bus stop.
Thanks for posting Tim! Of all the candidates in the race to post on bluemass so far, you’ve been the most specific and substantive. Best of luck in the upcoming special election!
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p>p.s: Hopefully you won’t garner the “Kiss of Death” endorsement!
but how about dropping a hammer on the kids kids SELLING drugs in HS? We also have a law on punishing those who sell drugs within a certain distance of a school but some liberals have claimed this is not helping and punishes drug dealers who live near schools and sell drugs.
Which liberals, when, and where, have taken the side of “drug dealers who live near schools and sell drugs”? Because I’m pretty sure you know perfectly well there are no such people, and you’re lying again. But if you can support that claim with credible evidence, I’ll happily retract that accusation and apologize. Or are you going to pull a Clark Hoyt?
and have never regretted it since. You were obviously the most progressive candidate, whose approach to law enforcement was not limited to simply locking up as many people as possible for as long as possible.
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p>This was back when the seat was being vacated by Tom Reilly.
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p>Unfortunately Martha Coakley won that primary and then the general election. Of course I voted for Martha in the last special election (what choice did any thinking person have?) but I still think you would have made a great DA.
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p>Good luck this time!
I really appreciate your vote and encouragement! It’s going to be a good race.
WhiteHouseDrugPolicy.gov has the numbers: (Executive Office of the President Office of National Drug Control Policy) “Table 1. Trends in the percentage of persons reporting any illicit drug use: 1979 to 2001” for “All (ages 12 and other)” in the line “Ever:” 1979: 31.3%. 2001: 41.7%.
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p>I suspect it is far easier for most kids (since that was the subject of your post) to get illegal drugs than to buy alcohol. That suggests that the best way to control drugs is to treat them like alcohol and sell them legally subject to licensing requirements for vendors and other restrictions.
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p>Would you support a measure like California’s Tax, Regulate and Control Cannabis Act of 2010 for Massachusetts?
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p>Bloomberg:
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Thanks for weighing in, Bob. I disagree with your premise that it’s easier for kids to get drugs than alcohol – that depends on a number of factors and differs from child to child. Even if that were true, it doesn’t follow that legalizing substances for adults automatically helps protect kids. Legalization for adults almost certainly makes it harder to curb youth addiction. Since we already have a law decriminalizing possession of small amounts marijuana, we’ll have evidence in the next couple of years one way or another on that. But we have to remember that vulnerable populations are sometimes easier to target when substances are legal – just look at the tobacco companies, who for years have been prohibited from marketing cigarettes to children but find ways around those restrictions. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health estimates that 730,000 underage children start smoking every year.
Challenging mandatory sentencing guidelines is a start, but a small one. Criminalization as a response to drug addiction has been an abject failure and we need to get rid of it, entirely. For decades we’ve been trying criminalization in a variety of ways, tuning the sentences and laws and resources and tactics this way and that, but the rate of drug addiction has remained pretty much flat the entire time. Criminalization has shown not the slightest evidence of being effective, and given how many decades we’ve been trying it, and how many adjustments we’ve made to how we’ve done it, that’s some very solid evidence that it’s a doomed strategy.
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p>While criminalization does absolutely nothing to reduce addiction rates, it does significantly raise the stakes: It increases drug crime, it feeds a thriving underground drug economy, it sends money to foreign criminals and terrorists while draining more money out of our communities, it kills people, it makes addicts more reluctant to get help, it makes resources less accessible to them, it increases the risk of drug use by making people less informed and the drugs they use more irregular and risky. More overdoses, more murders and robberies, more deportations and broken families, more poverty, and all for an illusion: drug criminalization cannot and will not achieve any positive goal.
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p>The public knows this. Support for easing off drug criminalization laws is steadily increasing, and way ahead of most legislatures, including ours. We need some leaders willing to speak up, loudly, for the public; we need our political leaders to follow where most of us already know they ought to go.
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p>What are you going to do about the failed and horribly destructive practice of criminalizing drug use?
I’m very concerned about the impact of drug use – of all kinds – on youth. I don’t support the total decriminalization of marijuana possession, but I also don’t believe our law enforcement resources, which are already spread thin, should be focused in that area. I’d like to see dealers put out of business and youth suffering from addiction to oxycontin, heroin, or other drugs get the help they need. For substances like oxycontin that are Class II narcotics, legalizing recreational use isn’t an option.
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p>It is worth noting that California, which allows legal medical marijuana dispensation, recently closed marijuana dispensaries because they were not able to control even limited access to the drugs. L.A. officials complained that marijuana was more prevalent than Starbucks coffee – I don’t think that’s the kind of community we want to create in Massachusetts.
Worth noting, yes: California took a big step, but it’s still a baby step compared to what we need to do. They tried to allow something relatively small (but the least objectionable) but continue to ban things that should not be banned and it’s obviously still a problem. I don’t know what “kind of community” you’re referring to, but places that have gone much further in decriminalizing drugs are doing just fine. Anything short of complete legalization of almost all recreational drugs is obviously going to leave us with some of the kinds of problems California is seeing, but those problems are a) not as bad as the worse problems they displace, and b) an effect of the fact that we’re only going partway.
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p>You don’t even support total decriminalization (which is more limited than legalization) or marijuana (the drug that it’s most blatantly obvious we should not sanction in general) possession (only possession, which implies you support full criminalization of, say, growing it, or giving it to someone else?), so IMO you are part of the problem in a big way. And the problem, as I said above, is severe. It is harming us all, a lot. Therefore, IMO, you are harming us all, and I don’t appreciate it 🙁
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p>I am not in your distct and fortunately am not affected by drug abuse.
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p>I also get that parochial issues like potholes and traffic are always important in legislative campaigns like the one you are in, but I am very happy to see that you are looking to talk about some larger issues that our state faces as well.
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p>I would very much like to hear what you have to say about the issues you mention above. Please be sure to continue posting!
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p>Welcome and good luck.
I would like to thank candidate Tim Flaherty very much for his pledge to fight on behalf of our youth, who are dying in record numbers, to substance abuse.
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p>I am no stranger to the tragedy of losing someone you love to drugs, I lost my older brother to heroin, 25 years ago and I almost lost my nephew to Oxycotin, a year ago.
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p>I have known Tim for many years, so I know he specifically understands this issue and has a personal committment to help these kids, as he has tried to help his close friend, and will continue to help him and the youth of Charlestown and beyond.
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p>My nephew was able to go to rehab for 6 months and thankfully he came out a new man, with positivie attitude on life! he has been clean for a year now and he will continue to fight to stay clean, as he knows, he is one of the lucky ones.
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p>There is hope for our youth to get the help they need for substance abuse, especially if they have an advocate like Tim Flaherty, on their side.
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p>Thanks for the fight Tim!