A bill making its way through the Arizona Legislature would allow law enforcement to keep people suspected of being impaired by drugs who are arrested in involuntary custody for five days.
Sen. Vince Leach, the bill’s sponsor, said at the state Capitol recently that SB 1257 would help combat crime.
“Everything that we’ve tried, everything that we’re trying, the current system, is expensive, but it’s not working,” Leach said.
Dr. Margie Balfort, who testified in support of the bill, says holding people in crisis centers for five days means there would be time for drugs, specifically meth, to clear from their system.
“Give us time to engage with them, with peer support, try to enhance their motivation for treatment, so that hopefully they would accept voluntary treatment,” Balfort said.
But, J. Alexandria Hunt-Garcia calls this government overreach and an infringement on individual liberty. Hunt-Garcia is a digital community organizer with local nonprofit Praxis Initiative as well as national group dream.org, which advocates for criminal legal reform.
Hunt-Garcia is arguing against the bill, and joined The Show to discuss.
Leach, the bill’s sponsor, told The Show in a written statement that people held under this law would be placed at the crisis recovery center that’s specifically for Title 36 patients, where they feel there is capacity.
Right now, he says, someone who comes into the center can stay voluntarily for a day, but, when they’re released, they “go out and relapse and come back in creating a cycle. With this approach, an individual can come in and receive treatment for five days for essentially the same cost and have a much better chance at getting better and breaking the cycle.”
The Show also reached out to AHCCCS, Arizona’s Medicaid program, but have not received a response.
Full conversation
J. ALEXANDRIA HUNT-GARCIA: It's really just an infringement on autonomy and trust, and forced detainment undermines voluntary care. I look at things from a harm reduction perspective, and coming from that angle, we really try to recognize that individuals who are struggling with substance use disorder, or even just using substances, must be able to choose their treatment path. And we see significantly higher levels of success when people are able to choose their treatment.
And then looking at it from a fiscal perspective in the bill, it's outlined that AHCCCS would be covering all of this forced detainment and treatment, and as many of us know in the United States, we are expecting massive Medicaid cuts coming down the pipeline.
You know, we're concerned that we're going to get to a point in the state where people are competing for Medicaid funding, and we don't want to get to a point where forced treatment is taking priority over individuals who are wanting to choose treatment.
LAUREN GILGER: So, right, you're talking about how this would be paid for by AHCCCS. That's Arizona's Medicaid program. They are signed in as neutral on this bill. I want to talk a little bit about another point that you mentioned there, which is the idea of, of who's targeted in things like this. Like, are you concerned about selective enforcement?
HUNT-GARCIA: Absolutely, that is a huge concern of ours. People who use substances are already such a marginalized group, and as we've seen with many of the drug bills that we've seen in the past, we saw it with the crack cocaine bills, which, interestingly enough, there are Republican-led initiatives this year that are passing through the Legislature to roll back some of those, you know, racist bills that had gone through many, many decades ago.
So it's interesting to see that on one hand, they're trying to roll back these initiatives that did target marginalized communities while also trying to pass bills that would likely do the same thing.
GILGER: So you talked about individual freedoms. I also want to ask another kind of logistical question here, which is just, do we know where people would spend these five days that they're being held? Like you've heard, I, I know from rehab facilities who are concerned about that.
HUNT-GARCIA: So I've, I've dug through the bill a lot. I have sent it to a couple of attorneys who've gotten back to me, and there are pieces that specifically mention the state hospital. There's also a line in the bill that specifically mentions accredited facilities that have a correctional accreditations, which concerns me that some individuals may actually end up in correctional facilities, but I haven't received any real solidified information from the sponsor yet to clarify that.
GILGER: And we have reached out about that as well. We've seen a bill similar to this, although it holds folks for much longer, pass in one other state, at least Kentucky. Tell us what you know about what happened there.
HUNT-GARCIA: Yeah. So I work on a lot of policy in Kentucky through my work at dream.org and have a solid number of colleagues and co-workers who work there. The way that it works there is any individual can petition the courts for 365 days of forced treatment. From what I've heard from individuals who are deeply involved in the recovery communities there, just like any treatment opportunity that you see, there's always going to be one or two people who are successful.
But they're using these one or two success cases to show like a blanket success of the entire program. But what we're hearing is that it's not successful. You know, at the end of the day, it really is no different than being in a correctional facility. People are being taken away from their careers, they're being taken away from their families, and realistically, we know that someone is at a significantly higher risk of overdose when coming out of a facility like that.
So our concern is that if this starts to pick up steam across the country, that this could actually increase overdose rates.
GILGER: Let me ask you about this idea of, of pushing someone into treatment involuntarily to begin with. Do you think that's something that is often successful by a law that's passed by the state Legislature or by a family member or by anyone?
HUNT-GARCIA: So we have a lot of data on forced treatment and we know that it's not effective. So that is where it really gets challenging is when you have people who are afraid that their children are going to die, or they're afraid that their loved ones aren't going to make it out of a substance use disorder. It's very hard because they're being driven by emotion, but we know through data and facts that it simply isn't effective.
GILGER: What would you rather see the Legislature focus on when it comes to addressing addiction in the state of Arizona?
HUNT-GARCIA: We're still in an opioid epidemic, we still are seeing rates of fentanyl use and overdoses too high. I think when we look at Arizona, there is a ton of opportunity for how we can combat the overdose crisis.
I think for a lot of people, legislators, people who are in power, it's going to take stepping out of their comfort zone and maybe taking some time to look at, you know, the things that they have learned over the years. Putting that down on paper with what we now know through evidence is effective for treatment and working together to find solutions that we know work through evidence.
There are a lot of different ways that that could happen. Investing in our communities, ensuring that people have their basic needs met. Even, you know, adhering to the federal methadone guidelines that were changed last year, clinics have done an incredible job of working to make those changes, which it can take a long time to, you know, start to align with a federal rule change that's a lot of work, I understand, but our people who are struggling with substance use disorder still have so many barriers, they have to overcome that we have the tools to help remove those barriers.
We just haven't done so, and I think that that needs to happen if we want to see a significant drop in overdose deaths.
