[BlueFlames]

How do you do that?  If you're a woman about to give birth, don't seek medical any sort of attention.  Why wouldn't you seek some sort of medical attention?  Let me introduce you to my home state:

In Tennessee -- particularly rural east Tennessee -- we have a huge problem with methamphetamine.  It's been the state's defining social welfare problem this decade.  An especially emotionally-charged part of this issue is that when a pregnant woman takes meth, the unborn fetus is likely to become addicted, even before birth.

Here in Knoxville, East Tennessee Children's Hospital has been operating beyond capacity, for years, treating drug-addicted newborns.  When they cannot take anymore in, newborns are sent to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the University of Tennessee Medical Center.  When UTMC is full-up, I don't know where they get transferred, but it's pretty often that they get sent on to wherever that next destination is, because the NICU is constantly full.

When you're a politician, and your constituency faces a social welfare problem that is this severe and this emotional, you have to do something.  So what do you do?  Community outreach to high-risk populations to get them into treatment programs before they get pregnant?  Subsidize treatment programs to make them less expensive than feeding a meth addiction?  Anything else that's remotely sensible?

Not if you're a politician in Tennessee.  If you're a politician in Tennessee, you wield the stick.  At the end of April, our state legislature passed and Governor Bill Haslam signed into law a bill that amends the simple assault misdemeanor to include taking illicit drugs, while pregnant.  Simple assault is punishable by up to a year in jail.

Carting new mothers off to jail was all very theoretical, until last week.  This past Tuesday, the Monroe County Sheriff's Department separated a new mother from her infant and hauled her off to jail, where she has languished, unable to pay bond, pending her trial.

In the coming weeks and months, we will see how far the state will take the execution of this new law, but the potential consequences seem dreadful.  Modern medicine makes childbirth a relatively safe procedure.  In a hospital setting, only ten women per hundred-thousand births die from complications in the childbirthing process.  It makes us forget that childbirth was quite dangerous in previous eras and in less technologically-advanced regions.  Without any medical care at all, childbirth claims the lives of 1,500 women per hundred-thousand births.  My fear is that drug-addicted, expectant mothers in this area will avoid drug treatment, avoid prenatal care, and avoid medical assistance during childbirth, in an effort to avoid being implicated for violating this new law.

[MP-Ryan]

*headdesk headdesk headdesk*

[headdie]

Wow, political masters degree in dumb.

[Dragon]

Just when you thought politicians couldn't get any dumber... Isn't this violating the constitution or something, though?
And of course, the simple, not-outrageous solution didn't happen to anyone. Legalize and regulate the bloody drugs!

[zookeeper]

Your link code is malformed.

Anyway, this was also said:

However, the new law does allow entering a treatment program before the birth and successfully completely it afterwards as a defense.

The grammar didn't make sense, but if that means that entering a treatment program before the birth and successfully completing it gets you off the hook then that's pretty reasonable.

[Nuke]

Just when you thought politicians couldn't get any dumber... Isn't this violating the constitution or something, though?
And of course, the simple, not-outrageous solution didn't happen to anyone. Legalize and regulate the bloody drugs!

marijuana yes. crystal meth, **** no, that **** is dangerous (unless of course you are lemmy, in which case its an elixir for immortality). the reason that marijuana has a reputation as a gateway drug is because when you go try to get some weed, the dealer will always try to push something stronger. eliminate the dealer and eliminate the problem.

[666maslo666]

I definitely agree in principle, taking teratogenic drugs while pregnant is the same a worst child abuse and such women deserve punishment. Either abort, or dont do drugs. That mother is morally a criminal and there should be no right to take dangerous drugs while pregnant. If my mother took drugs  while pregnant with me I would be pissed off. I am all for legalisation of drugs but only if you harm yourself, not children along with you.

But reality is not black and white and this could have an effect to discourage pregnant junkies from visiting hospitals. That is a fair point, and I am not sure I would support the actual law in practice. We will have to see what the effects are. Some kind of a warning or treatment program may be a good idea before applying this law.

[Flipside]

The road to hell is paved with good intentions....

[Dragon]

Just keep in mind that if the woman is punished while still pregnant, it could hurt the child further. I agree that taking drugs (drinking and smoking too) while pregnant should be punishable, but only after the child is born. Indeed, it should be forbidden to send a woman to jail while she's pregnant. As soon as she gives birth and recovers, though, it's off to the big house with her. This would ensure only the guilty party is actually punished.

marijuana yes. crystal meth, **** no, that **** is dangerous (unless of course you are lemmy, in which case its an elixir for immortality). the reason that marijuana has a reputation as a gateway drug is because when you go try to get some weed, the dealer will always try to push something stronger. eliminate the dealer and eliminate the problem.

Ah, right. The article indeed mentions meth addictions specifically. Well, in that case, legalizing pot could also help, since it'd strike a major blow against drug cartels and mitigate the "gateway drug" effect somewhat.

[Flipside]

God Damn the Pusherman...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN6eTXA0VlI

Edit : Damn you, youTube tags...

[BlueFlames]

Your link code is malformed.

Clearly, it's been a while since I've posted links.  That's fixed now.  Thank you.

Just keep in mind that if the woman is punished while still pregnant, it could hurt the child further.

There's also profound developmental consequences to separating an infant, especially a newborn, from its mother, which is exactly what the Monroe County Sheriff has already done.  There really isn't much of a way to punish a new mother without also punishing her child.  If you jail the mother, you necessarily have to separate her from her child.  If you fine her, then you take away resources she may need to care for her child, especially considering the economic demographic most affected by meth use--and remember in this specific case, the mother cannot make $2,000 bail.

I agree that taking drugs (drinking and smoking too) while pregnant should be punishable...

That's another problem with the law, though.  It only targets use of drugs that are already illegal.  A woman can get blitzed on a few bottles of wine every night that she's pregnant and face no legal consequences.  Likewise, if she has a crooked doctor, who will keep prescribing opiate pain-killers (the big drug problem of the previous decade, in Tennessee), then she can keep taking those straight the way through her pregnancy.  I find the prospect of scaring pregnant women away from medical care to be the most disgusting aspect of the law, but the inconsistancy is pretty appalling as well.

[InsaneBaron]

Great Scot! What a mess!

This seems to me like one of those Hydra problems. The current policy is down right stupid, no disagreement there. But simply ending said policy doesn't really solve the problem, because women will still try to take meth. The only approach I can see that would help would be a severe crackdown on the meth trade, which in turn would be expensive, difficult, and would take a long time to improve the situation (still worth it though).

[Dragon]

Yes, that's why it's not easy to implement a policy that would work in that case. Separating a child from it's parents, especially mother, is always traumatic, even if it's a horrible, abusive mother. The younger the child, the worse it is. The problem is, you're between Scylla and Charybdis in this case. You either separate the baby, which means it'll likely have psychological problems (not to mention finding somebody who'd adopt such a baby might be hard), or you can not do this, leading to the baby growing up addicted to drugs and probably with access to it. Either way, it'll be harmed in some very serious way. I think the lesser evil is to separate, if done right, it might work better than growing up as a meth addict.

The problem with cracking down against meth is that you're going against drug cartels, and they have a long history of avoiding those. They'd go under for the duration of the search, then re-emerge. The logical thing to do would be to strike against their command structures, but that might be hard without ending up in a war with half of the South America. If it was as simple as blowing up a few plantations or assassinating a few drug barons, MARSOC or some other SpecOps team would've done it long ago. They have to be eliminated by other ways, such as making them lose their profits by legalizing certain kinds of drugs and fighting corruption that leads to dealers slipping through the police's fingers.

That's another problem with the law, though.  It only targets use of drugs that are already illegal.  A woman can get blitzed on a few bottles of wine every night that she's pregnant and face no legal consequences.  Likewise, if she has a crooked doctor, who will keep prescribing opiate pain-killers (the big drug problem of the previous decade, in Tennessee), then she can keep taking those straight the way through her pregnancy.  I find the prospect of scaring pregnant women away from medical care to be the most disgusting aspect of the law, but the inconsistancy is pretty appalling as well.

Indeed, this is another thing I loathe about these laws. I can agree to a lot of things, provided they're implemented consistently and reasonably. Hypocrisy is one of the worst things that we have in the laws today. I can live with a harsh, but consistent rules, but I detest laws that are hypocritical, illogical and contradictory. People should, generally, obey the law, but how are they to do so if they don't understand it? Government (even, bah, especially, my favorite kind; the monarchy) and laws are supposed to exist for the benefit of their people, not the other way around. Unfortunately, politicians don't care about such little things as honesty and consistency.

[BlueFlames]

The problem with cracking down against meth is that you're going against drug cartels, and they have a long history of avoiding those. They'd go under for the duration of the search, then re-emerge. The logical thing to do would be to strike against their command structures, but that might be hard without ending up in a war with half of the South America.

I just don't know what you're on about here.  It sounds like you're confusing one drug problem for another.  What's at issue here isn't so much drugs that are being imported from South America, like cocaine or heroin, but stuff that's produced and cheaply available locally, particularly methamphetamine.  Cracking down on supply is actually a viable option, which could be effectively combined with increasing the availability of treatment options, so that you can get people out of their addictions, by means that don't involve separating mothers from their newborns.

But that's not what we've done.  The state government has decided to impose stiffer punishments on a specific catagory of user, and when stiffer punishments are imposed on people addicted to a drug, they don't suddenly become unaddicted; they go to greater lengths to avoid the punishment.  Hence my concern about pregnant women avoiding medical care before and during childbirth.

[Dragon]

The problem with cracking down against meth is that you're going against drug cartels, and they have a long history of avoiding those. They'd go under for the duration of the search, then re-emerge. The logical thing to do would be to strike against their command structures, but that might be hard without ending up in a war with half of the South America.

I just don't know what you're on about here.  It sounds like you're confusing one drug problem for another.  What's at issue here isn't so much drugs that are being imported from South America, like cocaine or heroin, but stuff that's produced and cheaply available locally, particularly methamphetamine.  Cracking down on supply is actually a viable option, which could be effectively combined with increasing the availability of treatment options, so that you can get people out of their addictions, by means that don't involve separating mothers from their newborns.

Don't drug cartels control meth trade, too? Yes, it can be made locally, but ultimately, I've had the feeling that the criminal underworld doesn't take kindly to any "independent" illegal activity. The reason I mentioned South America is the bosses generally seem to be based there, and I see no reason why they wouldn't be connected to this issue, too. I don't know how it works in the US, though.

Though if most of the suppliers really are small-scale ones, that might be even worse. Where there's demand, there's supply, and if even if there was a state-wide crackdown, what'd stop dealers from smuggling the drugs from another state? Or addicts from driving to another state and buying their meth there, for that matter? There are no checkpoints on state borders, AFAIK.

[Scotty]

You've been watching to much Breaking Bad.  Local production of methamphetamines generally outstrips "imports", especially in certain areas.  Independence, Missouri had the nickname "meth capital of the US" for a good while simply because of the sheer number of labs that would explode or get raided every year.

[Aardwolf]

The reason this law came to be is also the reason why it will be difficult to fix the problem.



As far as fixing the problem, I bet legalizing marijuana would reduce how many people start meth, if not also allow current meth addicts to transition off of it onto something less addictive.

But the reason laws like this are getting passed is because there's a private prison industry in the US, and they (through ALEC) are (one of?) the biggest lobbyists for harsh penalties for drug related offenses. They don't care about protecting babies, they care about having as large a prison population as possible, since they (effectively?) get paid per prisoner. Protecting babies is just the excuse they use to sell the idea to dumb voters.

[Aardwolf]

Double-post because dammit this is a big deal.



I tried to confirm whether ALEC had their hands in this, but it seems my Google-fu was too weak. I kept getting stuff about Alec Baldwin I couldn't even find the name of the law.

Still, ALEC and the private prison industry are relevant to this discussion even if it turns out they didn't have their hands in this particular law, because they're (one of?) the main obstacles to fixing US drug policy in general.

[InsaneBaron]

Yes, that's why it's not easy to implement a policy that would work in that case. Separating a child from it's parents, especially mother, is always traumatic, even if it's a horrible, abusive mother. The younger the child, the worse it is. The problem is, you're between Scylla and Charybdis in this case. You either separate the baby, which means it'll likely have psychological problems (not to mention finding somebody who'd adopt such a baby might be hard), or you can not do this, leading to the baby growing up addicted to drugs and probably with access to it. Either way, it'll be harmed in some very serious way. I think the lesser evil is to separate, if done right, it might work better than growing up as a meth addict.

The problem with cracking down against meth is that you're going against drug cartels, and they have a long history of avoiding those. They'd go under for the duration of the search, then re-emerge. The logical thing to do would be to strike against their command structures, but that might be hard without ending up in a war with half of the South America. If it was as simple as blowing up a few plantations or assassinating a few drug barons, MARSOC or some other SpecOps team would've done it long ago. They have to be eliminated by other ways, such as making them lose their profits by legalizing certain kinds of drugs and fighting corruption that leads to dealers slipping through the police's fingers.

That's another problem with the law, though.  It only targets use of drugs that are already illegal.  A woman can get blitzed on a few bottles of wine every night that she's pregnant and face no legal consequences.  Likewise, if she has a crooked doctor, who will keep prescribing opiate pain-killers (the big drug problem of the previous decade, in Tennessee), then she can keep taking those straight the way through her pregnancy.  I find the prospect of scaring pregnant women away from medical care to be the most disgusting aspect of the law, but the inconsistancy is pretty appalling as well.

Indeed, this is another thing I loathe about these laws. I can agree to a lot of things, provided they're implemented consistently and reasonably. Hypocrisy is one of the worst things that we have in the laws today. I can live with a harsh, but consistent rules, but I detest laws that are hypocritical, illogical and contradictory. People should, generally, obey the law, but how are they to do so if they don't understand it? Government (even, bah, especially, my favorite kind; the monarchy) and laws are supposed to exist for the benefit of their people, not the other way around. Unfortunately, politicians don't care about such little things as honesty and consistency.

Ironically, I was just reading "Clear and Present Danger".

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any silver bullet here. To solve the problem you'd either need to make people stop taking meth, or cut off the supply of it.

On a side note, I find the idea of LEGALIZING the drugs downright terrifying.

[Mongoose]

Yeah, it's one thing if you're talking about pot, but **** like meth is flat-out poison.