1. The Social Effects of Mass Incarceration
A. What does Hank Green mean when he says that we must remember that wars on drugs and crime are also "wars on people"? 2. Fixing the System: VICE on HBO Special Report
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1. Mass Incarceration in the United States - Infographic
A. How many people in jail/prison in the US? B. What is the percent increase in this population over the past 40 years? C. Compare America's incarceration rate to Russia, Australia, China, Canada, and Germany. D. Compare the number of people incarcerated for drugs in 1980 versus 2014. What is the primary cause of the difference? E. How has the number of people serving life sentences changed between 1980 and 2012? F. Compare the percentage of the population made up of people of color, versus the percentage of the prison population that are people of color. G. Which group of Americans are the most likely to be incarcerated? Which is least likely? H. When looking at the data, what is the most shocking, or surprising to you? 2. Detailed Graph of the American Prison Population A. Identify something that surprises you. B. Identify something that you are not surprised by. C. Identify a question you have after looking at the graph. 3. The Social Effects of Mass Incarceration A. What does Hank Green mean when he says that we must remember that wars on drugs and crime are also "wars on people"? HW - Finish any unanswered questions from items #1 and #2 above. We will do item #3 in class on Thursday. 1. Is Economic Despair What's Killing Middle-Aged White Americans?
2. The Statistics of Drugs in America Slideshow (and quiz)
1. Treatment dilemma: No consensus on cure as demand for it explodes
2. Watch: Video - Portugal's Approach to Fighting Drug Addiction. 3. Analyze the Portugal Data - click here for the graphs
4. Collins Type 2 Writing Assignment - due by end of class
1. Opioid Addiction Hitting Maine Hard
Excerpt below from: http://www.pressherald.com/2017/03/26/lost-heroins-killer-grip-on-maines-people/ They are dying in the potato fields of Aroostook County and the lobster-fishing harbors Down East. They are dying in the western Maine foothills where paper mill closures have sown economic anxiety. They are dying in cities like Portland and Lewiston and in the suburbs, where opioids are in plentiful supply. The death toll reached 376 in 2016, driven almost entirely by opioids – prescription painkillers, heroin and now fentanyl, a powerful synthetic. More than one victim per day. More than car accidents. Or suicide. Or breast cancer. Only four years ago, there were 176 overdose deaths, less than half the 2016 total. Twenty years ago, just 34 people died from drug overdoses. But in the last few years, the crisis has been more acute here than almost anywhere else. From 2013 to 2014, Maine saw the third-highest increase in any state, 27 percent. The following year, 272 Mainers died from overdose, a 26 percent increase, putting the state behind only New Hampshire, North Dakota and Massachusetts in the rate of increase. That gave the state an overdose mortality rate, adjusted for age, of 21.2 per 100,000 people. Comparable state-by-state data has not been compiled for 2016 but the recent numbers for Maine, where deaths increased by another 39 percent, suggest the trend is worsening. It shows no signs of stopping. The list of deaths would be longer if not for the increased availability and use of the drug Narcan, which reverses the effects of an opioid overdose. In 2016, rescue workers used Narcan 2,380 times, up from 1,565 the year before, according to state data. Republican Gov. Paul LePage has been critical of Narcan and has used language that suggests people get what they deserve and shouldn’t be saved after a couple of overdoses. The hardest part for Dowd and the many others like her throughout the state who treat addiction every day isn’t the number. It’s the sense that Maine hasn’t seen the worst of it yet and an entire generation is at risk of being lost.“I don’t know how we can just sit and watch this happen,” said Dowd, who is soft-spoken by nature but passionate in bursts. “Where is the outrage? Where is the urgency?” 2. What is "Opioid Addiction"? 3. Disease or bad behavior: Does addiction call for compassion or punishment?
4. Continue PBS Frontline: Chasing Heroin HW: Describe/define the heroin/opioid treatment options below. Explain the basics of the approach, and identify any significant pros and cons (including success rates) A. Methadone B. Buprenorphine/Suboxone C. Naltrexone C. Needle Exchanges D. Supervised Injection Sites E. Inpatient rehab F. Narcotics Anonymous 1. Short Answers to Hard Questions About the Opioid Crisis
2. Why is the opioid crisis hitting rural areas hardest? Some sociological hypotheses: "As the epidemic becomes more deadly and reaches into more communities across the country, researchers are scrambling to both diagnose what causes some places and people to be more susceptible to opioid abuse, and to devise solutions. Jack Westfall, a family physician and researcher at the University of Colorado and with the High Plains Research Network, works with a network of rural clinics and hospitals in the state and says doctors on the plains are feeling frantic. “The number one issue we’re facing is opioids,” Westfall says. For more than a decade, opioids have been a key part of a rural doctor’s pain management for patients, Westfall says. When there’s a lack of treatment options in a rural area, alternatives like physical therapy are out of the question and drugs are a prime option. Medication-assisted treatment for drug addiction is also limited, leaving those addicted forced to drive hours to get prescriptions for Buprenorphine, an opioid used to wean people off heroin and other illicit forms of the drug. When a patient shows up addicted to prescription medication, many rural doctors feel helpless, Westfall says. “We don’t know what to do with this wave of people who are using opioids,” he says. “They’re in the clinic, they’re in the ER, they’re in the hospital. They’re in the morgue, because they overdosed.” Rural areas may be particularly fertile ground to the growing opioid problem. Some researchers think larger economic, environmental and social factors leave rural Americans at-risk. University of California-Davis epidemiologist Magdalena Cerdasays the epidemic is a perfect storm. After the 2008 recession, rural areas consistently lagged behind urban areas in the recovery, losing jobs and population. “You have a situation where people might be particularly vulnerable to perhaps using prescription opioids to self-medicate a lot of symptoms of distress related to sources of chronic stress, chronic economic stress,” Cerda says. The specific types of jobs more prevalent in rural areas -- like manufacturing, farming and mining -- tend to have higher injury rates. That can lead to more pain, and possibly, to more painkillers. Other research points to the unique social structures in rural America as a potential cause. In some ways, rural regions are built to spread illicit drugs. Kirk Dombrowski, a sociologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, says people who live in rural areas tend to have sprawling social networks. “One of the things that is counterintuitive to most of what we think of as a small town is that rural people have much larger social networks than urban people,” Dombrowski says. In some cases, Dombrowski says, rural residents know and interact with about double the number of people an average urban resident does, giving rural people more opportunities to know where to access drugs. “So some of those social factors of being in a small town can definitely contribute,” he says. The epidemic’s rural nature landed it on the desk of U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack who’s been leading the Obama Administration’s interagency push to curb opioid abuse. That included a $1 billion budget request recently funded by Congress in the form of the 21st Century Cures Act, structured to give grants to states hardest hit by the epidemic. “It’s not a fundamentally rural problem,” Vilsack says. “But it’s a unique problem in rural America because of the lack of treatment capacity and facilities.” 3. PBS Frontline: Chasing Heroin
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