{"id":9688,"date":"2015-05-18T13:30:43","date_gmt":"2015-05-18T17:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=9688"},"modified":"2015-05-18T13:30:43","modified_gmt":"2015-05-18T17:30:43","slug":"force-is-the-best-medicine-how-america-overdosed-on-drug-courts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2015\/05\/force-is-the-best-medicine-how-america-overdosed-on-drug-courts.html","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;&#8216;Force is the Best Medicine&#8217;: How America Overdosed on Drug Courts&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>by Maia Szalavitz:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"ng-scope\">\u2026If doctors were to deviate this far from\u00a0the standard of care in treating patients, they would face malpractice judgments and, in extreme cases, criminal prosecution. But drug court judges face no such accountability, even though they generally acknowledge that addiction is a disease and make final decisions on which treatments are permitted. \u201cA judge\u2019s decisions cannot be mucked about with unless they\u2019re illegal or a total abuse of discretion,\u201d says Peggy Hora, a retired drug court judge from California who has long argued in favor of maintenance. Unfortunately, this judicial\u00a0independence, otherwise so crucial to the balance of democratic power, means that drug court judges\u2014who are not required to have special training\u2014can disregard the medical consensus. They are granted great leeway in making life-and-death decisions about treatment. In effect, they are allowed to practice medicine without a license.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"ng-scope\">\n<\/p><p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.psmag.com\/politics-and-law\/how-america-overdosed-on-drug-courts\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">more<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Maia Szalavitz: \u2026If doctors were to deviate this far from\u00a0the standard of care in treating patients, they would face malpractice judgments and, in extreme cases, criminal prosecution. But drug court judges face no such accountability, even though they generally acknowledge that addiction is a disease and make final decisions on which treatments are permitted. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[171,121,53,107,55,51,234],"class_list":["post-9688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abuse-of-power-comes-as-no-surprise","tag-doctors-and-policemen","tag-maia-szalavitz","tag-prayers-to-st-joseph-cafasso","tag-prayers-to-ven-matt-talbot","tag-so-far-from-god-so-close-to-the-united-states","tag-the-war-on-some-drugs"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&quot;&#039;Force is the Best Medicine&#039;: How America Overdosed on Drug Courts&quot;<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"by Maia Szalavitz: ...If doctors were to deviate this far from\u00a0the standard of care in treating patients, they would face 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