September is National Recovery Month, which is our country’s annual reminder that people can and do recover from addiction.
It might seem hard to imagine for some folks, but recovery is something that prosecutors appreciate dearly. We spend our days dealing with the damage addiction leaves behind. We also know that locking up every person who struggles with addiction would create more problems and solve nothing.
Fentanyl has pushed that tension into the open. In the short time that fentanyl has plagued our streets, it has already become the most lethal drug we have ever seen, and the work dealing with it demands two tools to be used at once.
The first tool is hard enforcement against the people who sell it, who choose to sell death. Fentanyl is not an ordinary drug. It can be disguised as so many other drugs and the unexpected consequences of taking it, even a very small amount is often deadly. Although each person’s reaction to fentanyl is different, many overdose deaths occur when less than the equivalent of a few grains of salt is consumed. And the person who is exploiting the user’s addiction just to make a profit is gambling with people’s lives.
As the president of the Oklahoma District Attorneys Association, I am very proud of the fact that during last session, legislation was passed that will give prosecutors some real help with this issue. A new law requires law enforcement to go to every scene when someone overdoses, so a death is investigated as the crime it is, and it allows fentanyl found in a person’s body to stand as evidence of what killed them. Too many overdose deaths went unworked because the trail went cold before anyone treated it as a criminal case. That changes this fall. I was one of the first district attorneys in Oklahoma to successfully prosecute a homicide case from a fentanyl overdose death. Since then, my office has and will continue to aggressively prosecute and secure convictions against the drug dealers trafficking the deadly poison responsible for so many fatal overdoses in our community.
However, I recognize that punishment is only part of the solution. The second tool my office is utilizing points in the opposite direction. Most people battling addiction are not dealers or traffickers. They are someone’s son, or mother, maybe a person who got hooked on an actual legal prescription or perhaps an individual who hit a bad stretch and could not find their way back. For many of them, a prison cell is the most expensive way to make the problem worse.
That is where drug court comes in.
My office oversees the Comanche County Drug Court Program.
This is an alternative to jail or prison. Once a participant pleads into drug court, the real work then begins. The program is designed to be very demanding but also understanding, because addiction doesn’t go away overnight.
A participant faces regular drug testing, frequent court dates, real treatment, steady employment and a board who notices fast when they slip up. If a defendant fails out of the program, they go to prison.
However, if they complete the program that typically takes two years, there is no prison time, they get the case dismissed and perhaps even off their record completely.
I am very proud of the fact that graduates of our program are far less likely to return to the system than people we simply incarcerate.
When it works, the state stops paying for the same person’s crimes year after year, a family gets a loved one back, and our community hopefully gets more productive citizens. Prosecutors decide who may be the right candidate, and that is one of the most consequential calls we make.
The hard part is judgment. Some people are too dangerous for that path or just don’t want help and my office is expected to recognize and sort out the entire lot. We will not always get it right. However, a system that only punishes, or only forgives but doesn’t enforce accountability, will fail the people it is meant to protect.
We all can do our part to help with this problem. If you keep a prescription opioid, lock it up and properly dispose of any extra. If you have a teenager, talk to them about the pill that is laced with certain death, because it only takes one. If someone you love is in the grip of addiction, know that a criminal charge is sometimes the door to treatment rather than the end of the road.
Drug addiction is involved, some way with most of the cases my office prosecutes. We will continue to fight the poison but refuse to give up on the person. Keeping both in mind at the same time is part of myjob and I am honored to do it.
Kyle Cabelka is the District Attorney for the fifth district serving Comanche and Cotton counties.