![]() Paramedics should not become, at the direction of ill-informed politicians, arbiters of who deserves to live and who deserves to die based on one's lifestyle choices. Middletown Fire Chief Paul Lotti, a critic of the proposal, noted that 85 percent of the department's overdose runs involve first-time callers, who would not be subject to the three-strikes rule.Įffective or not, the policy still raises ethical concerns. Should the proposal pass, supporters may be surprised at how little it does to stop the onslaught of overdose calls. However if lawyers determine that it is, it will come up for a city council vote. At this rate, he says, emergency services eventually won't be able to respond to other calls and "the city's going to run out of money." The city, meanwhile, is not even sure Picard's proposal is legal. Picard countered that many didn't understand just how bad the situation had gotten in his city, where "out-of-the-box thinking" was now required.īy Picard's estimation, each overdose response costs the city $1,104. Recently, Middletown, Ohio, city councilman Dan Picard proposed that paramedics not respond to addicts upon a third overdose.Ĭritics decried the proposal as unbelievably cruel. The desperation to end this epidemic has not brought out the best in everyone. The lieutenant governor of the state has even opened up about her family's struggle with opioid addiction. Many counties in Ohio no longer have enough room to store all of the bodies of overdose victims, forcing the state to lend out mobile morgues that are normally reserved for large-scale disasters. In Cincinnati-my hometown- 174 overdoses took place in less than one week last year. While more Americans are coming around to the idea that drug addiction should be treated as a public-health issue rather than a crime, the recent rise in opioid overdoses threatens this shift in public opinion, especially in the areas most ravaged by this new epidemic. If it happens, God lets it happen, and when we say “I don’t understand,” God replies, “I don’t care.This article first appeared on. I think of John saying that Wharton killed the Detterick twins with their love for each other, and that it happens every day, all over the world. as Abraham would have sacrificed his own son if actually called upon to do so. Yet this same God sacrificed John Coffey, who tried only to do good in his blind way, as savagely as any Old Testament prophet ever sacrificed a defenseless lamb. Jingles, and the tiny scraps of wood we found in that hole in the beam, I think that is so. ![]() I think back to the sermons of my childhood, booming affirmations in the church of Praise Jesus, The Lord Is Mighty, and I recall how the preachers used to say that God's eye is on the sparrow, that He sees and marks even the least of His creations. “I look back over these pages, leafing through them with my trembling, spotted hands, and I wonder if there is some meaning here, as in those books which are supposed to be uplifting and ennobling. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption The real question of capital punishment in this country is, Do we deserve to kill?” I told the congregation that Walter's case had taught me that the death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. I reflected on how mass imprisonment has littered the national landscape with carceral monuments of reckless and excessive punishment and ravaged communities with our hopeless willingness to condemn and discard the most vulnerable among us. Walter's case taught me that fear and anger are a threat to justice they can infect a community, a state, or a nation and make us blind, irrational, and dangerous. A system that denies the poor the legal help they need, that makes wealth and status more important than culpability, must be changed. “Walter made me understand why we have to reform a system of criminal justice that continues to treat people better if they are rich and guilty than if they are poor and innocent.
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