The New Jersey State Commission of Investigation released a report covering their findings and recommendations from an investigation into “abuses and corrupt practices in the addiction rehabilitation industry in New Jersey.” The report, while making several broad, generalized recommendations, did not include the comprehensive policy analysis that would improve the dire situation people with substance use disorders face daily while seeking help. Perhaps it was written with good intentions, but the road to unintended consequences is often paved with such and New Jersey must stop wasting funds and assets on anything other than evidence-based responses to the current health crisis we face.
February 2024: The term ‘second chances’ is frequently spoken but rarely embraced. Eduardo Macedo said that “[t]rue redemption is seized when you accept the future consequences for your past mistakes.” Nowhere is that concept of redemption truer than in New Jersey, with one caveat. In New Jersey, and America, most people who become involved in the criminal system do not become so because of ‘mistakes’ or ‘choices.’ Many people become ensnared in the criminal system because of failed policies and laws, such as the War on Drugs, which has criminalized a public health crisis for a better part of a century
November 2023: New Jersey and its subdivisions will receive more than 1.1 billion dollars over the next two decades to combat the opioid epidemic through settlement agreements with various opioid manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. According to the terms of the settlement agreements in those various cases, approximately half of the settlement dollars will go directly to the State to administer and, after payment of litigation expenses, the remainder will be distributed directly to 262 eligible subdivisions (comprising 21 counties and eligible municipalities that have populations over 10,000 or that filed related lawsuits).
July 2023: New Jersey Legislature has taken bold action to increase education, awareness, and prevention related to suicide on college campuses, in response to the recent alarming increase in such preventable deaths. New Jersey is also the first state in the nation to legislatively require the use of medically correct and non-stigmatizing terminology in its statutes and government entity names related to substance use disorder.
March 2023: On March 16, 2023, Governor Murphy signed Senate Bill 783, which codified his Executive Order No. 305, and legislatively established the Opioid Recovery and Remediation Advisory Council (the “Advisory Council”) and the Opioid Recovery and Remediation Fund (the “Fund”).
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