Final Project SOC

Joyce Bronson, from the Help You Help Us Foundation, advocates for treatment instead of incarceration for minor drug possession charges. She also supports the decriminalization of drugs to reduce government spending and increase tax revenue. She addresses stereotypes about increased overdoses and juvenile use, citing examples of countries and studies that show no significant changes. Joyce believes that decriminalizing drugs like marijuana can help combat the opioid crisis and promote sobriety. She shares a success story of an individual who received treatment instead of a long prison sentence and now helps others in recovery. In conclusion, Joyce emphasizes that incarcerating individuals with substance use disorders is not beneficial and calls for the decriminalization of drugs. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Joyce Bronson. I am with the Help You Help Us Foundation. What our foundation is, is we're a group of advocates to advocate for individuals to receive treatment in lieu of jail incarceration for minor drug possession charges as well as paraphernalia charges. We also like to advocate for decriminalization of minor drug possession charges as well because it shows that, you know, if individuals are suffering from substance use disorder, they just receive treatment in lieu of incarceration. This can actually help them minimize the chances of them recommitting these crimes that they have done in the past. While we are so strong-willed into the fact that we need to decriminalize some drugs, it's because of the fact that this will not only boost our community by reducing the funds that the government has to pay to house individuals that are incarcerated, but this can also help increase our tax revenue. Revenue by taxing these drugs will actually help, you know, with items like schools, roads, you know, with, for example, with the legalization of marijuana that took place, there was a lot of increased tax revenue, job growth, and investment opportunities in Colorado. The school system definitely benefited from that. Overall, the state, you know, received a huge increase in their tax revenues as well as other states that followed suit. Now, it's not, you know, legal in all states, but it is decriminalized in a lot of states as well as the use for marijuana, for medical marijuana also helps generate tax revenue. Now, some of the big stereotypes that we hear as a result of legalizing or decriminalizing drugs is that people think that if we decriminalize drugs, people are going to have a huge amount of overdoses. And while there is some countries now that have decriminalized certain drugs, for example, Mexico, Portugal, Switzerland, Czech, they are a handful of countries that have decriminalized drug use and possession for personal use, not like large quantities, but personal use. They have not seen an increase in their overdoses as a result of that. I also read an article that, you know, some people have a stigma that if they were to decriminalize drugs like marijuana, that it would increase in juvenile use. Like, you know, because they have no reason to be scared to use it or be caught with it because they don't, they're not going to go to jail or get a penalty. But there was a study shown that they showed there was actually no increase in juvenile use as a result of decriminalizing marijuana in certain areas. It was actually an article I read in decriminalizing and legalization of marijuana in the United States. It's a great article. In that article, it actually even stated that they did a study in New Mexico and regarding the legalization of marijuana and their studies determined that the new law did not influence, you know, young youth and cannabis use. So they've been, you know, targeting and stating that young youth can actually help combat the opioid crisis. And I understand that, you know, you're treating one drug with another drug, but that's sort of similar to what suboxone does. So if we can decriminalize marijuana and it can help individuals who suffer from opioid use disorder, then I would say let's go ahead and do that. I mean, you know, this helps reduce the chances of them overdosing. So smoke a little bit of marijuana to help with their withdrawal symptoms. That's great. I mean, I think that's better than trying to have them, you know, combat their opioid use disorder withdrawal symptoms with suboxone. And then, you know, it could actually help them find a way for sobriety, which is always a benefit for that individual, but for us as well as citizens, because, you know, this will help, you know, avoid the individual from doing any type of crime to obtain these drugs. And, you know, obviously they're going to, you know, you may even get caught with the opioids and that would cause an incarceration or, you know, something they would do to support their habit, like stealing or anything of that sort, robbing individuals. You know, all of this is a result of someone's opioid use disorder. And, you know, the crazy thing is, is a lot of people say, well, I don't know anyone that deals with that. This doesn't affect me, but opioid use disorder affects everyone in a state, in the country. Even if you don't know anyone that has it, you are still affected by an individual that uses. So this is why I encourage everyone to look into the option of treating an individual instead of requiring an individual to go into incarceration. I've got a great example of how treatment in lieu of incarceration actually helped change an individual's life and may have actually helped change quite a few of other individuals' lives. And one of the individuals that we had to advocate for, she had served a couple years for a petty larceny charge. She was released and then she continued to fail her drug screenings with her probation officer. As a result of her continuing to fail her drug screenings, they violated her probation. So she went to court and the judge said, you know what, you can't stay clean 14 years. So instead of giving her an option of going to treatment, they just gave her 14 years, which was all of her suspended life, her suspended sentence, excuse me. So her parents wrote to the governor asking for a pardon, explaining the situation. Someone from the governor's officer contacted us and said if you can find her a program to go into, then we will allow her to be pardoned after three years of no failing a drug screening. So she went into a program. She completed the initial 28-day program and she stood in sober living for a year. After she completed her sober living for a year, she moved out into her own place. In the meantime, while she was in sober living, she obtained her peer recovery specialist license and now she's actually employed with the local community service board, helping addicts get into recovery. One way that we have found in our advocacy is that the best way for an individual to continue with their sobriety is to help the next individual get into recovery. If you give someone a purpose in life, then that will actually help motivate them to continue to move forward. So we actually not only advocate for individuals to receive treatment in lieu of incarceration, but we also need to figure out what's the best course of action for that individual once they've completed treatment. How can they continue to stay sober? So of course, obviously, 12-step programming is great. 12-step meetings are awesome. You can, you know, after a year of sobriety, you can be a sponsor to another individual. But also obtaining that peer recovery specialist license. You know, getting actually helping the next individual with your life story. And we found that that's been a great option for a lot of individuals. So regardless of the options that we have here in conclusion is that no one benefits from incarcerating individuals as a result of their substance use disorder. So the best thing, and I will continue to advocate for this, is to decriminalize drugs, not in large quantities, obviously, but anyone with a small possession charge. They should not be incarcerated because of their substance use disorder. It's a mental health issue that needs to just be able to be treated instead of just locking them up. Thank you. And again, we'll be back at another time. Have a wonderful rest of your day.