| Hans-Günter Meyer-Thompson | International
USA. We Are Nurses, Not Police. The US Methadone System Expects Otherwise.
USA. We Are Nurses, Not Police. The US Methadone System Expects Otherwise.
Recent public attention to police brutality, systemic racism and oppression has brought calls for changes to a policing structure that manifestly fails to promote community health and safety. These run the gamut from radical defunding and abolition to reformed models of policing, where officers partner with trusted mental health professionals like social workers or psychiatric nurses. Social worker Dr. Sheila Vakharia of the Drug Policy Alliance* argues that this approach will “exacerbate our profession’s already fraught role as agents of social control,” and “will not fundamentally change even one of the myriad harms inflicted.” (Filter, USA, 07.10.2020)