Opioids & Mental Health
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New Jersey has an opioid crisis and it is ripping families apart.
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Courts are being forced to separate children from addicted parents. Children fall victim to opioids obtained from friends at school, or prescription drugs taken from medicine cabinets. Some buy it on the street, laced with lethal fentanyl.
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There must be a public education campaign about the risks of opioid abuse, and how to keep them out of the hands of children. Parents should fully understand the risks of leaving prescriptions sitting on a shelf or in a medicine cabinet.
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Physicians who over-prescribe are contributors to the addiction problem. We can insist that the American Medical Association better educate doctors on the kinds of prescriptions that lead to addiction. We must clamp down on doctors who over-prescribe dangerous drugs that end up in the hands of our children.
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We have to get serious about making treatment options available to those who are in danger of becoming addicted or those who are addicted. Throwing them in jail and turning children into orphans is a cost to society that we cannot recover. Let’s end the prison cycle and start the treatment and healing cycle.