rob korobkin, mph 🦞 @robkorobkin Twitter profile | Pikagi

Pikagi

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

@robkorobkin

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I help provide homes to 70 low income survivors of trauma and incarceration across Maine (he/him). Dad, husband, dog friend. @busph #harmreduction #housing

portland, maine

https://t.co/CPQcbIK3e1

Joined May 2009

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

I testified to the Maine legislature today about the need for Maine to lift the "one for one" restrictions on our state's syringe service programs, which limit the number of clean needles these programs can give to intravenous drug users. #ssp , #harmreduction , #760ox , @maiasz

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

So this kid tested positive for Suboxone at an anti-medical sober house in my town, and they kicked him out. Kept his money for the month and put him on the street. Into a snowstorm. In Maine. In January. With nothing. We had one bed open out of 55. He’s safe. And I’m angry.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

@Elizabe87622123 Or just human decency as a minimal baseline. Let folks see doctors. Don’t abruptly make people homeless during snowstorms when they haven’t done anything wrong. Give them back their money etc.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

@DarwinsDog Nice thing about poor people is that they don’t have money to hire constitutional lawyers to sue in federal court. And there’s no municipal, county or state level official in Maine who’ll touch this case with a ten foot pole.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

You ever wonder: What if we legalized opioids, and it just, like, turned out not to be that big a deal?

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

We NEED to just let people buy FDA-regulated opioids. It is completely possible for folks to use opioids safely. Allowing folks to do so is the only way out of this nightmare of crime and human tragedy.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

We lost Kari Morissette tonight. Kari was a powerhouse of sass, grit and fire - a survivor of trafficking and horrifying trauma who served as the executive director of the Church of Safe Injection, a peer-led harm reduction group serving some of Maine’s hardest hit communities.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

I hate "relapse is part of recovery" - I prefer just "sometimes people who use drugs use drugs."

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

Taking Buprenorphine or methadone doesn’t mean you’re still “on drugs” - not because they aren’t drugs (ibuprofen is a drug) - but because that whole concept of “drug” is a lie. It’s all just medicine, of varying safety, used in various ways to solve various problems.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

@AlexisAiello5 I think the other way to frame it is that not everybody’s brain is about to self-regulate dopamine correctly - how great that there’s a safe FDA-regulated pharmaceutical that can help regulate their opioid receptors on an ongoing basis for them.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

An “addiction” counselor told me tonight that she thinks people use drugs because they have “triggers,” like Pavolv’s dogs unlearning every bell that makes them salivate. Seems to me most folks use drugs because they want to get high, and they’re tired of being treated like dogs.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

“Dopesick” needs to be more publicly condemned - it’s just so rife with dangerously misleading drug war propaganda.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

Often, when I meet folks on opioid agonists who say they want to get off, it isn’t actually because they want off their medication. The meds are life changing. It’s being told that they’re still “addicts.” It’s the money. The time. And the constant humiliation at the clinic.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

If folks who are opioid dependent could simply walk into a pharmacy and pick up regulated opioids covered by Medicaid - they wouldn’t be getting sick, dying, going to jail, doing desperate things to acquire medication etc. Those things aren’t innate consequences of the drug.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

It is okay to want: sedation, euphoria, debilitation, disassociation, relief from pain, transcendence. A society that offers no permissible ways for people to meet these needs will always be at war with itself.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

It's amazing to me how widespread the dogmatic certainty is right now that opioids are ALWAYS a terrible treatment for severe chronic pain. The truth is that LOTS of people do great long term on opioids. Our healthcare system is both cruel and foolish to deny them that option.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

Got a call just now from somebody looking for a bed who asked if we allow residents to be on subs? Of course we do. It’s just a prescription. The terrifying number of programs that don’t are operating in clear violation of federal law and should be shut down by the government.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

Our current "drug problem" isn't actually the result of bad drugs being too accessible. It's largely the result of good drugs not being accessible enough.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

One of the worst things pop culture is doing right now is acting like folks must be crazy to do drugs. For a lot of people, using opioids and stimulants is the most logical thing a person could do in their situation.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

After spending hours searching my soul to find what I believe about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, my thoughts are that every fatal drug overdose is a failure of public policy, and as such, the US government is directly responsible for the murder of 100,000 Americans last year.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

It’s amazing to me how many people are so insistent on Treatment, and yet so disinterested in how folks are actually treating people who use drugs.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

It is profoundly troubling for "recovery" organizations to be staffed exclusively by middle class, 12 step / "abstinence-based" white people with zero behavioral health training or advocacy experience. That's the tweet.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

The term “drug abuse” is especially troubling in regards to criminalization because “abuse” absolutely should be criminalized - abusing your kids, your wife, your employees, senior citizens etc. When we call folks who use drugs “abusive” it justifies state violence against them.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

If we want people to stop dying of fatal drug overdoses, we have to make generic Buprenorphine/Naloxone available for free over the counter at every pharmacy. Prescribers are just unnecessary gatekeepers.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

When I first stopped drinking in 2011, I wanted the whole world to get "clean" from "addiction." But the deeper I get into harm reduction and public health, the more I just want to meet folks where they're at. These days, I'd rather make the world loving than "clean." #760ox

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

A certain percentage of the population will always use opioids. Might go up a bit. Might go down. The vast majority of them are totally sober, not high. In fact, they’re more functional on them. Our top policy goal should be helping these folks get safe drugs easily.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

Today’s “controlled substances” are literally the least controlled substances in our society right now. A lot of what harm reduction folks are actually trying to do is get them under control, so they’ll be safe to use, and the people selling them will follow the laws of commerce.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

The idea that some opioids are "drugs" and others are "medications" has a lot more to do with state violence, capitalism, and a mean-spirited culture of social paranoia than it does with biology.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

A lot of the time, the best response to opioid use disorder is to help folks find a well-ordered way to use opioids.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

I’m convinced that, if we just allowed folks using drugs better access to the FDA-regulated medicines available within every pharmacy (bupe, methadone, heroin analogs etc), rates of both fatal overdose and overall crime would plummet. The conversation needs to center on this.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

12 step saved my life. I genuinely believe that. I’m not sure how I’d have stopped drinking without it. But, boy, do we need to accept that: messed up stuff happens within the fellowship, it doesn’t actually work best for most, and nobody should ever be forced to go to meetings.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

Even if a patient did, in fact, unwittingly becoming dependent on opioids as a result of being improperly prescribed them by a doctor, they still deserve to be in the driver's seat of their own care. It's their body and their life, and they deserve for it to be their choice.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

I don’t love the phrase “illegal” drug; it’s an adjective, just a description of what something is. I prefer “banned” drugs, that’s a verb that describes what happened to the thing. It implies that it was the state, not the powder itself, that created the situation.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

We will never solve “the drug problem” by forcing people to stop doing drugs. It won’t work. We need to give people different drugs and safer ways to use them. We need a less violent state and a more generous public sector. We don’t actually need sobriety.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

I will ALWAYS reject any framing of drug policy that posits a difference between “legitimate” chronic pain patients and “addicts.” Trauma physically changes the brain, and I’ve never met anybody with chemical dependency who wasn’t also carrying a great deal of pain.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

The vast majority of "addiction treatment" is incredibly expensive, usually doesn't work, and is therefore largely a waste of resources. We need real housing, medical care, community support groups, professional counseling, and, most importantly, social and economic justice.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

I strongly believe that people should be able to get actual heroin from the pharmacy instead of the street corner - for a whole slew of reasons. But I refuse to frame bupe and methadone as “safe supply” - they’re just medical care for a chronic health condition.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

Residential programs for people with opioid use disorder that prohibit their residents from being on maintenance medications should be illegal. If they will not change of their own accord, the government must shut them down.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

Tent cities don’t get “cleaned up.” Dirt gets cleaned up. Worthless garbage gets cleaned up. Human beings get “forcibly removed.” Human beings get “threatened with violence.” Human beings get treated like dirty worthless garbage - and that’s the whole problem.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

Breaks my heart to see the “recovery” community be so cruel toward folks in active use. Too many cold shoulders. Too much harsh and unhelpful advice. Too many debilitatingly ill people being left hating themselves for being sick, drowning in shame and guilt and ostracism.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

This whole thing where rich white women lose their kids to fatal drug overdoses, so they go out for blood to put even more poor black kids behind bars… It’s revolting.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

There isn’t a single person using street fentanyl right now who wouldn’t be exponentially safer and better off with the real thing. Giving them meds won’t solve all of society’s problems, by a long shot, but it’s got to be a core part of the solution.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

I’ve literally NEVER met anybody who actually works in behavioral health services think that the answer to folks not having a place to live is just to force them all into “rehab.” That idea really only appeals to people who know nothing about the topic.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

@sam_goldfarb4 @Ham_onRy @dederoghut @jameshamblin ^^ this is sooo much of Twitter. It’s amazing.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

If we legalize drugs, the cartels will have to start making their own coffee and eating less avocado toast.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

The vast majority of people who use drugs are not homeless - street drug use is just often the most visible. And there’s tons of people on the street who don’t do hard drugs - many people just find “drugs” to be the most palatable explanation of how those folks got there.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

By far, our two biggest "drug problems" right now are the poor quality of our drug supply and the cruel overreach of our criminal system. According to prohibitionist logic, these are the costs of mitigating drug problems - in fact, they ARE our main drug problems.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

The idea that opioid use, even somewhat chaotic opioid use, is akin to “literally dying” is relatively new in the grand scheme of things. People used real heroin for decades relatively safely - it’s only the new stuff that’s all analogs and cuts that’s so lethal.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

For the most part, people who do drugs do, in fact, do drugs. As such, the majority of the time, the best that we can realistically hope for is for folks to do safer drugs in safer ways with fewer negative consequences. Anything short of that is just denial, cruelty and futility.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

Sure I discourage people from doing most drugs, especially kids. But if they do them anyway, I definitely don’t support putting them in government facilities to be tortured and enslaved. I’ve just seen far too much of that. And I’m tired of it. It’s exhausting and heartbreaking.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

I hate when I see stuff about “lives lost to addiction” - addiction, if you even want to use the word, doesn’t actually kill people. It mostly just makes them unhappy and inebriated a lot of the time. It’s the toxic inconsistency of our criminalized drug supply that’s so lethal.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

The framing of “using opioids to treat opioid addiction” / prescribing opioids as “medication for opioid use disorder” is so convoluted. We’re really just helping a person switch from using street opioids in a disordered way to using Rx opioids in an ordered way.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

@orthonovum777 It comes on a lot of the cups, and it’s useful to know if folks are taking their meds, so we can talk about what’s working and what isn’t etc, but prohibiting it outright, making people homeless immediately just based on a cup, it’s awful.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

Criminalization is lazy as policy and exhausting as practice.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

In my experience, the elephant in the room among folks in long term recovery is that we ALL know folks who overcame addiction and who now can have a beer, smoke a joint, drop some acid etc. But a lot of us will never say it publicly, at least not in 12 step circles.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

If the only “treatment goal” that a service provider will accept is “abstinence” (esp abstinence from opioid agonists), in my experience, it’s basically guaranteed that the provider isn’t actually treating people with respect or decency.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

Taylor Hawkins used drugs for decades. He also succeeded at an incredibly demanding career and seems to have showed up for his family as a husband and dad. Yes, eventually something went wrong, but for so long, it didn’t. Everybody deserves that.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

I believe strongly that we need more, not fewer, physicians prescribing opioids for “personal use.” At the point at which you know what you’re getting, accept the risks inherent to it, and have access to a full array of health services - you should be allowed to have it.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

In a world that’s frequently this torturous for folks, I find it totally understandable that so many people would want to use drugs. We don’t just need to heal individuals of “addiction.”We need to heal entire communities. And only love and justice will get us there.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

“Addict” isn’t a clinical diagnosis - it’s a social caste, a class of people frequently considered untouchable, who are treated as fit to be caged and ostracized and discarded as undesirable for employment, tenancy, or partnership. It’s intersectional. And vicious.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

There’s been great writing on Part One of the opioid epidemic - the Sacklers etc. But now somebody’s got to write a book about Part Two - the 2016 prescribing guidelines, Andrew Kolodny etc., the grand intervention that tripled the death count. @maiasz , @RyanForRecovery

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

I LOVE being sober. Being sober has enabled me to build a wonderful life. I just wish more sober folks would be loving toward folks using drugs. We're so much stronger and safer together.

Tweet media one

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

It’s ridiculous to say that folks on bupe or methadone living stable lives have opioid use disorder (OUD). They have opioid dependence, sure. But I feel like there has to actually be disorder for there to be a disorder.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

Alcohol is legal and a massive threat to public health. Cigarettes, pink slime cheeseburgers, and Monster energy drinks threaten the public health too. Intravenous opioids and methamphetamine will ALWAYS pose dangers too - legalization just makes those dangers easier to mitigate.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

To me, harm reduction isn’t just “needles and Narcan” - it’s an entire approach that says, start by asking people what THEY want and then help them get it. Sometimes folks want to keep using street drugs, other times they don’t, but everybody wants to be safer.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

The real danger of psychedelics is not the occasional “bad trip.” The bigger risk is that dangerous people will use those drugs to take advantage of other people emotionally, financially, and sexually. The drugs are safe enough. It’s the people we need to be wary of.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

I hate the phrase "opioid epidemic." I like the phrase "overdose crisis."

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

People don’t quit drugs just because they hit “rock bottom” - life can remain really bad for a long time. They need an “exit ramp” - a medical facility, a prescription instead of street drugs, a home instead of a trap house, a friend instead of just another cold shoulder.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

Counseling should never be a REQUIREMENT to receive medical care. We need to start selling bupe by the Advil and stop enslaving PWUD to the treatment industrial complex.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

“Addiction” is not really the big problem here, and as such, “Recovery” is nowhere close to being the solution a lot of folks seem to think it is.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

Folks who bring bupe into jails or share their script with friends who are dopesick deserve medals for altruism, not handcuffs.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

Jesus Christ. It's so obvious to me that we need a medical model that truly cares for folks who use opioids. Kicking them to the curb, instead, and laughing as they suffer is grisly and sadistic, to say the least.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

The opinion editor of the largest newspaper in Maine just offered me 700 words to co-write a piece (w a doctor friend) about what went wrong with our state’s “opioid crackdown” and what should be done to best fix the prescribing guidelines. What do we say?

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

It upsets me to hear a grieving mother say - “my daughter was an addict who lost her battle with the disease of addiction.” I guess it’s better than not talking about it at all, but come on, we can’t only talk about drugs as if they were cancer. They aren’t.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

I am concerned about fentanyl when a 22yo in my community bumps a line of "coke" at a party. I am not concerned about fentanyl (rainbow or otherwise) when the kids in our community go out for Halloween candy.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

“Harm Reduction” can’t only reduce the harm that we do to ourselves - accidentally killing ourselves, giving ourselves diseases, etc. We must also reduce the harm done to us by heartlessly violent police, landlords, medical providers, and the public sector that enables them.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

If we prescribe fewer opioids, we'll have fewer opioid problems... Simple. But wrong. 1. ILLICIT opioids are the problem - less Rx, more demand for them. 2. Millions of pts BENEFIT from opioids - cutting them off creates problems. 3. For SUD pts, opioids ARE the treatment.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

It's profoundly unhelpful, to the point of being misleading, to publish about deaths caused by fentanyl and fail to distinguish between Rx fentanyl (Actiq etc) from CVS, and the mysterious bags of white powder being sold in parking lots. That distinction matters a lot.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

The whole Saint Suboxone thing is just crass consumerism. Buprenorphine is a tool. So’s fentanyl. So’s AA. Or mushrooms. Or running a marathon. Different people want different things and have different problems. There are no panaceas.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

The whole concept of “dealer” is an invention of prohibition.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

This guy killed a lot more people than the Sacklers, and very, very few people even know his name.

@ravensspirit68

Arianne

@ravensspirit68

1 year

Kolodny made a comment about a generation needing to die off before we'd see reduction in OD deaths. Well, we're seeing multiple generations dying off now & drug deaths rise due to CDC guideline fallout because this was NEVER about rx opioids being over prescribed. #ChronicPain

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

I remember hearing a government official say a few years ago that there were opioids coming out of both clinics and the street. First we’d cut off the clinics entirely. Then we’d go after the street. In retrospect, that’s one of the dumbest policy ideas I’ve ever heard.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

I don’t believe in a drug free America. I believe in a free drug America.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

@DarwinsDog Hopefully this case will eventually set a precedent, but there’s an argument that people have a RIGHT to live in “drug free environments,” including subs, you just can’t make them live there.

Class Action Alleges Salvation Army Discriminates Against Opioid Addicts Underdoing Doctor-Prescr...

A class action alleges the Salvation Army has put thousands each year at an increased risk of death, relapse, severe illness and homelessness by denying those with opioid addiction access to doctor...

www.classaction.org

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

Lots of people have times in their lives when their substance use is a bit chaotic and harmful. The vast majority stop on their own. When the drug supply and enforcement is like this, however, what might otherwise be a phase becomes a nightmare.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

Just heard that some anti-immigrant cop in Maine is opening a 48-bed rehab that won't allow residents to be on opioid agonist treatment. To say that I hate these people would be an understatement.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

“Recovery” without harm reduction is heartless. “Harm Reduction” without recovery is hopeless.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

When suffering people are desperately self-medicating on the street, we should get them actual medical care. There’s an enormous amount of evidence that often the best medical care in that situation includes Rx opioids. It just does.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

Some people say that we need to ban opioids to protect the relatively small percentage of opioid users who develop problematic relationships with those drugs. Those folks are precisely why I think opioids must be legal - their problems are so much worse when criminalized.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

It’s tempting to focus on the fact that clean needles lead to net savings in Hep C, HIV and endocarditis treatment. But I feel like, if that’s where we’re at, we’ve kind of already lost. Our fellow human beings have got to mean more to us than our healthcare budgets.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

If a patient doesn't take an opioid prescription as prescribed, often it's actually the prescription that should change, not the person.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

The idea that the opium poppy can be a sacred and beautiful and powerful thing seems important. And hugely lost in most conversations.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

@Katamac1967 Shame too. He knew he’d agreed to stay off bupe while living there, but he was feeling sick and a coworker or friend or somebody split a strip with him. That’s illegal. The house rule is awful, the law is awful etc. But he did commit a crime, and he must have been kicking himself

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

Somebody told me tonight that they "just don't see any value in helping people use." Put simply, I see a lot of value in helping people use drugs safely. A lot.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

The vilification of harm reduction is akin to blaming fire fighters for the existence of house fires. There’s a lot of folks to blame for people being stuck on the street in cycles of extreme poverty and toxic drug use - but no, the few people trying to help aren’t among them.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

It’s soul-crushing to talk to kids these days who are utterly convinced that they’re going to die soon. Almost all their friends already have. So much of what they see is dark, deflated, and emptying. I’m used to kids who aren’t sure if they want to be sober. This isn’t that.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

I hate seeing kids using cannabis in ways that harm them, but we've got to follow the data and actually listen to kids, not just freak out and tell them what to do. We have LOTS of public health levers to throttle here - criminalization is fundamentally lazy public health policy.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

Addiction is a problem. Fatal overdose is a problem. They are not the same problem.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

2 years

If problematic drug use is a public health problem - then drug courts make about as much sense as tuberculosis courts.

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@robkorobkin

rob korobkin, mph 🦞

1 year

Sending people to jail for using illegal drugs makes sense - until you actually learn about penal institutions. Sending them to treatment makes sense - until you actually learn about most treatment programs. We need housing, healthcare, work with dignity. We need safe supply.

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