Subject: Re: Vote Republican, cut ACA
Mere enforcement of laws on the books does wonders for people who are hopelessly addicted to drugs or mentally ill. You offer them treatment like this
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a...

...and you see results:
The increase in illicit use of heroin and other illicit opioids is a serious public health concern. Despite justice-involved persons being especially vulnerable to overdose and relapse upon release, prisons and jails have been slow to allow this population access to MAT. Rhode Island’s statewide comprehensive program expansion at the RIDOC shows that MAT is feasible in correctional settings, and preliminary outcomes suggest strong rates of treatment retention after release.


Have you followed up on this? Because the trend I noticed over the years is that any new way of treating it seems to work for a bit and then slowly deteriorates back into almost what it used to be. Portugal's experiment was very promising and I propose it for a long time and the Economist touted it too. It seems that if you try something new it seems to work for a while and then fade. Portugal's rates are about the same as the rest of Europe now. But I'm willing to back it if you want to try it.

By the way, I wrote about my border proposal. That we use embassy type powers to create compounds in Mexico that housed the legal processes deciding who qualified for amnesty. That we didn't release people into the US to come for their court date. They would be assigned dates and we'd have compounds in which they lived during their case time. And they didn't have to be by the border, but we could do a few by the border. Away from the border we would hire mostly local Mexican nationals to run the place, but have an American judge who'd fly down Monday through Friday. This was before I knew there was a "remain in Mexico" policy that went in and out of favor with Mexioo. When I brought it up much later and used "remain in Mexico" you refused to "buy" that I had proposed it.

I even proposed that we have trained quasi judges (administrators) whose main job was to hear cases and sort them out by merit, eliminating cases with no merit, and the remainder went before a judge. It all sounded good, but reality bites. Dope, you are absolutely too well practiced at venom and nastiness for anyone to believe that isn't the main way you trained.