Gloucester police department offers heroin addicts amnesty, treatment

[unhappycamper]

http://www.wcvb.com/health/gloucester-police-department-offers-heroin-addicts-amnesty-treatment/34715948



104 addicts sent for treatment under amnesty program

Gloucester police department offers heroin addicts amnesty, treatment
8:08 AM EDT Aug 14, 2015

GLOUCESTER, Mass. —The young woman nursing a fresh black eye has come to the police station in this old fishing city for help. But she's not looking to report a crime or seek someone's arrest. She wants help kicking her heroin addiction.

"It was better than the alternative," says the woman, in her mid-20s, as she waits wearily for her ride to a detox center, following a long night that involved a stint in the emergency room, wrestling with the early pains of withdrawal and, finally, sleep in a police holding cell. "I just knew if I was let go, I'd just go out and use."

Gloucester is taking a novel approach to the war on drugs, making the police station a first stop for addicts on the road to recovery.

Under a policy launched in June, heroin and opioid addicts who voluntarily turn themselves in at the station are fast-tracked into treatment services through a team of police officers, volunteers and trained clinicians.