West Virginia's Judicial System: A Case Study

The United States of America has had a war against drugs since the 37th president, Richard Nixon, declared more crimination on drug abuse in June 1971. From mid-1990s to today, a crisis challenges the health department and government on opioid regulation, as millions of Americans die due overdoses of painkillers. Opioids are substances used as painkillers, and they range from prescription medications to the illegal drug, heroin. Abusing these substances can cause a dependency or addiction, which can lead to overdoses, physical damages, emotional trauma, and death. To ease the crisis, physicians are asked to depend on alternatives to pain management. Law enforcement cracks down on profiting drug-dealers and heroin abusers. People are warned against misusing opioids. The controversy begins for those who suffer from chronic pain, because they depend on opioids. There’s so a correlation to the 1980s cocaine epidemic, and people are upset over racial discrimination. Nonetheless, the best way to avoid this crisis is to recover the people at risk, reduce inappropriate opioid description, and have a proper response.

In Israel on the Appomattox author Melvin Patrick Ely uses the case study of Prince Edward County, Virginia, to shift the historiography surrounding the treatment of free blacks in the Antebellum South. While the current historiography paints the Antebellum South as attempting to subjugate free blacks into a system “‘as near to slaver as possible’” (p. 437), Ely posits that because of the existence of black slavery “Southern whites felt secure enough to deal fairly and even respectfully with free African Americans” (p. x). And though Ely agrees that “laws and public statements about free blacks in the Old South constitute a sordid parade of mean-spiritedness” (p. 436), the actual behavior of white citizens of Prince Edward County rarely align with “the path their social ideology prescribed” (p. 440). In going against the previously well-established understanding of the relationship between free blacks and whites, Ely has placed upon himself the large onus of disproving so many who have come before him, and the approach he takes within Israel on the Appomattox is as fascinating as it is convincing.

The Commonwealth of Virginia v. Allen (609 S.E.2d 4, Va. 2005) was a fascinating case. The case focused on two expert witness testifying for the state and the other for the defendant, and if they acted and behaved ethically during the proceedings. Successive information will be addressed to prove the thought process behind my opinion given in this case. The APA code of ethics and specialty guidelines will be used to support my reasoning. Furthermore, they will serve as a baseline of boundaries within the profession to determine the expert witness’ influences to the case as well as their behavior within the profession.

The state court system in the State of Washington is divided into five different levels with each level exercising a different area of authority based on the seriousness of the legal issues being addressed and the prior history of the case (Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts). For instance, in the lower levels of the system, such as the District and Municipal Courts the jurisdiction limits of said courts are limited to cases where the amount in controversy is less than $75,000.00 or where the criminal sanction is less than one year in county jail. As one progresses up the different levels, the amount in controversy and criminal sanctions increase proportionately.

Last summer two men in Hunt county Texas were arrested for selling synthetic drugs reported by the Herald Banner. The lab reports returned “the substance was not illegal at the time of the offense”. This is not an isolated case but a continuing dilemma for law makers, enforcers and prosecutors against the makers and distributors of designer drugs. (1) Creating a ‘War on Drugs’ is not a solution. Due to the simplicity of manipulating a product on the banned substance list, chemical change formulations outpace efforts to impose control. (Stock, S. Web)

The United states has taken consistent efforts to control the distribution and manufacture of medications and other drugs, with many efforts regulate possession importation and sales of various types of drugs. While there are several historic pieces of legislation that deal with the regulation and control of various substances, there is no other single piece of legislation that is an important and impactful to health care as the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. This essay will explore the history of this legislation, its purpose and passage from proposal to law. Some may argue American this is true for American society as a whole, because of the implementation of this law and the addition of the Drug enforcement Agency as the agency that

America is in the midst of yet another drug-related epidemic only this time it is the worst opioid overdose epidemic the world has seen since the late 1990’s. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC 2016), “since 1999, the number of overdose deaths involving opioids has quadrupled.” Opioids (including prescription opioids and heroin) killed more than 33,000 people in 2015, more than any year on record. (Rudd, Seth, David, School, 2015). With overdoses from heroin, prescription drugs, and opioid pain relievers surpassing car accidents as the leading cause of injury-related death in America, it became clear that swift and comprehensive legislation was needed for treatment, recovery support and prevention education in communities

Drugs have been a problem in the country for a long time. Issues with drugs even existed in ancient times. However, through the War on Drugs, the media created a panic about the issue, making citizens believe drug abuse was an exponentially growing new epidemic in the United States. Although the War on Drugs was declared in 1982 and was intended to reduce the rates of drug abuse in the US, America’s drug problem increased dramatically over the next years (Bagley, 1988).

The entire country is facing a serious drug abuse epidemic, and Appalachia sees the effects of this epidemic as much or more than any other part of the country. As the coal industry dies, jobs are disappearing much more quickly than new industries are able to replace the jobs that have been lost. This is causing many Appalachian citizens to turn to other means of producing an income, whether they are legal or not. One of the most popular sources of illegal income in Appalachia is the drug trade, more specifically, the trade of prescription drugs. In the 1990s, many pharmaceutical companies began aggressively marketing their new prescription drugs such as OxyContin and other prescription pain killers to the citizens of Appalachia for the abundance of work related injuries from the dangerous jobs they have done their entire lives. Heroin has also recently become a drug of choice

In 2012, enough opioid prescriptions were written to cover every adult in America at least once , but that trend has already begun to be reversed. Last year, 17 million fewer opioid pain relievers were prescribed than in the year before. The concern is that the new guidelines and policies are blunt instruments that are denying patients who appropriately use their prescription opioids access to medications, rather then blocking access for the recreational, illicit user of opioids. There are reports of physicians who are wary about writing prescriptions for opioid pain relievers, those who blindly follow guidelines without considering the nuances of an individuals’ needs, and those who have

The policymakers below have played a considerable role in the development, implementation and support of the laws directed towards the opioid epidemic. They are Republican, conservative, and their personal view on the opioid epidemic is undisputed. Each believes a response is needed across all levels of government with strong leadership from the private sector inclusive of pharmaceutical companies and prescribers ("Compact," 2016). Few differences exist among the policymakers thereby simplifying their view and voting record comparisons. A brief

The rate of death due to prescription drug abuse in the U.S. has escalated 313 percent over the past decade. According to the Congressional Quarterly Transcription’s article "Rep. Joe Pitt Holds a Hearing on Prescription Drug Abuse," opioid prescription drugs were involved in 16,650 overdose-caused deaths in 2010, accounting for more deaths than from overdoses of heroin and cocaine. Prescribed drugs or painkillers sometimes "condemn a patient to lifelong addiction," according to Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This problem not only affects the lives of those who overdose but it affects the communities as well due to the convenience of being able to find these items in drug stores and such.

There are three women on the Supreme Court, one of whom is Latina, and there is one black justice serving on the Supreme Court (Brown, 2016). This is a major issue. The United States, the “melting pot”, has an extreme lack of diversity in their court system. This is an issue that affects several aspects of society. Decisions made by judges will affect the lives of men, women, and their families. The decisions made by judges can also create law. Unlike political officials, the people do not always have the power to vote judges into their positions. Instead, the people hope that their peers with the power to affect the system choose a candidate that will fight for them. Often times, this does not happen.

The United States has concentrated its endeavors on the criminalization of medication utilize. The administration has, without much of any

The so-called “War on Drugs,” as declared by the Nixon administration in the signing of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, marked the beginning of the current era of mandatory minimum sentencing, racism, privatized prisons, and a powerful constituency that profits as a result of the prohibition of drugs. Psychoactive substances have been apart of the human experience as long as humans have walked the earth. There is little hope that drug production will ever be curtailed, so long as there is a demand; a demand that has remained steady even though it has been forty years since the beginning of said war. As Judge James P. Gray from the Superior Court of Orange County has so plainly put it: “Where did this policy