For those who lived through addiction, a split on whether jail can help

EVERETT — For Jennifer Cunningham, who turned her life around after a 25-year struggle with addiction, criminalizing drugs is not the answer.

Incarceration, she said, is like “going to the walk-in clinic for a gunshot wound. You’re just putting a Band-Aid on (the problem).”

Nicole Speaks, another advocate, sees it differently. Jail changed the course of her life.

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Cunningham and Speaks are just two voices in a divide over criminalizing drugs in the aftermath of a 2021 state Supreme Court ruling known as the Blake decision. Justices ruled the law making drug possession a felony was unconstitutional, because it didn’t specify “knowing” possession.

https://www.heraldnet.com/news/for-those-who-lived-through-addiction-a-split-on-whether-jail-can-help/