Opinion: Expanding drug courts won’t help ease the opioid crisis
The White House's opioid commission recommends a major expansion of drug courts nationwide, but that won't ease the epidemic of opioid use and overdoses.
Wednesday’s report from the White House’s opioid commission recommends a major expansion of drug courts nationwide.
Drug courts — courts that impose mandated, abstinence-based treatment on people arrested for drug possession, with close judicial oversight — arose in the 1980s and ’90s as a laudable attempt to ease the devastating effects of the war on drugs. Today, there are more than 3,100 drug courts in the U.S., up from just one in 1989 and 665 in 2000. Half of all U.S. counties now have at least one operating drug court.
Yet available evidence does not support their continued expansion.
