Cheer

If you attended Thursday’s forum on the opioid crisis in Butler County and Western Pennsylvania, you got an earful of information to consider — from how opioids work on your brain to how peoples’ misconceptions and preconceived notions of addiction and treatment can help inflame and prolong the problem.

The program, which was heavy on remarks from medical experts, law enforcement officials and state policy-makers, was a strong start. County officials have promised a sustained and wide-ranging effort to engage communities in conversation on the issue.

We hope the next installment builds on Thursday’s work and does more to prompt interaction between attendees and speakers, and address citizens’ questions and concerns regarding how the epidemic is playing out in homes and neighborhoods in this county. Those moments — experts directly responding to the critiques, questions and concerns of people in the audience — produced Thursday night’s most compelling and revealing moments.

If the goal is to spark public interest in and debate of this issue, the best way to do it is show people that they really can get answers to their questions. The prospect of having a real conversation with the people leading the fight will always be more alluring than sitting through an event that boils down to lecture-by-committee.

Jeer

Gov. Tom Wolf hasn’t said whether he will approve a bill passed Thursday by legislators that would impose ridiculous restrictions on naming officers involved in fatal or near-fatal shootings. The bill passed the General Assembly with veto-proof majorities, but that’s no reason for Gov. Wolf to avoid taking a stand for common sense and the public’s right to know.

The bill goes further than just allowing police departments to avoid immediately releasing the names of officers involved in such events. It makes releasing those names a crime — a second degree misdemeanor — for anyone except the state’s Attorney General’s office or district attorneys.

Absent a credible threat against officers or their families, there is no reason to restrict the public’s access to this information in such dramatic fashion. Furthermore, criminalizing the release of such information is about as wrongheaded and damaging to the delicate balance of respect and trust between departments and communities as anything we’ve seen.

Gov. Wolf should exercise his veto and repudiate this bill.

Cheer

The Ellen O’Brien Gaiser Center’s annual Community Celebration featured the personal story of a tearful recovering addict and calls for the community to unite and erase the stigma surrounding drug addiction and treatment. But the cherry on top was the center’s formal announcement that it would soon be breaking ground to expand its inpatient treatment capacity.

Specifically, the addition will provide more room for female clients at the center. That’s news of amazing import, given how scarce treatment beds are in general and how difficult it can be for women to find gender-specific facilities specifically.

Addiction is a disease that knows no boundaries, but recovery is a delicate and complicated endeavor and gender does matter physically, emotionally and mentally when people are going through the process of getting, and staying, clean.

The center’s expansion will be an important and much-needed addition to the county’s treatment infrastructure.