“Knowledge of subnational systems of taxing and budgeting and of fiscal policymaking processes can be put to use to reduce and to end governments’ reliance on user fees for courts and for other aspects of criminal systems. This reader aims to help experts in public finance to understand the misuse of court-based assessments which are regressive revenue streams…. These materials interact with ongoing seminars, sometimes virtual, to link people experts in public finance with their counterparts seeking to reform unfair monetary sanctions. Through monographs such as this, we hope to support work underway to shape just and equitable revenue-generation mechanisms that avoid imposing harmful costs on vulnerable individuals, families, and communities.”
Author: kinnear.18
Modeling Health Benefits and Harms of Public Policy Responses to the US Opioid Epidemic
This piece, aimed at estimating health outcomes of policies to mitigate the opioid epidemic, concludes based on its findings that “policies focused on services for addicted people improve population health without harming any groups.”
Sourced from Abstract in link.
Opioid Crisis: No Easy Fix to its Social and Economic Determinants
“Overreliance on opioid medications is emblematic of a health care system that incentivizes quick, simplistic answers to complex physical and mental health needs. In an analogous way, simplistic measures to cut access to opioids offer illusory solutions to this multidimensional societal challenge.”
Sourced from Abstract in Link.
Today’s nonmedical opioid users are not yesterday’s patients; implications of data indicating stable rates of nonmedical use and pain reliever use disorder
“Health care in general, and pain and addiction management in particular, are nuanced undertakings. Current public policies aimed at reducing opioid-related deaths ignore such nuance in favor of ham-handed, empirically dubious, and demonstrably harmful dictates. Americans suffering from chronic pain, and those from whom they receive their treatment, deserve medical care managed through better-informed and more even-handed policy.”
Sourced from Abstract in link.
Whitewashed: The African American Opioid Epidemic
This piece aims to expose the ways in which we have focused our attention in regards to the opioid epidemic almost exclusively on white communities, leaving many African American communities who suffer in similar ways without the same care, attention, or exposure. Treatment and response plans should include African Americans as apart of the conversation, and this paper aims to support that claim with data and studies.
The “Drug Policy Ratchet”: Why Do Sanctions for New Psychoactive Drugs Typically Only Go Up?
This paper aims to show “that the drug policy ratchet cannot be justified as an example of the precautionary principle in action, as this principle is itself not rationally justified. We conclude that recognition of the drug policy ratchet and its mechanisms may help researchers and policy-makers to improve regulation of NPS.”
– Sourced from Abstract in link.
Toward Healthy Drug Policy in the United States – The Case of Safehouse
This work focuses on critiquing the past views on drug policy and calls on the Controlled Substance Act’s failure to control the supply of drugs and thereby reduce drug-related harms.
Sourced from the New England Journal of Medicine.
Substance Use and Recidivism Outcomes for Prison-Based Drug and Alcohol Interventions
This article evaluates data in recidivism, criminology, incarceration, and other areas of the criminal justice system to highlight the difficulties of conducting quality research in the prison setting and suggest innovative study design for future research on what best practices could be in order to ensure the best possible outcomes for inmates long-term.
Link: https://academic.oup.com/epirev/article/40/1/121/4992689
A Pitiful Sanctuary
“As they enter, the bathroom door clicks decisively behind them. Escaping from the bustling clinic lobby, they are alone, finally hidden to do what their mind and body are demanding: dissolve the pain and stem the symptoms of withdrawal.”
– Sourced from bio in link
Link: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2736567
Assessing the effects of medical marijuana laws on marijuana use: the devil is in the details
“This paper sheds light on previous inconsistencies identified in the literature regarding the relationship between medical marijuana laws (MMLs) and recreational marijuana use by closely examining the importance of policy dimensions (registration requirements, home cultivation, dispensaries) and the timing of when particular policy dimensions are enacted.”
– Sourced from bio in link