The UMass-Dartmouth
Law Review staff held a Roundtable Symposium on the Law's Solutions to
the Opioid Crisis in the Larkin Moot Courtroom at the UMass-Dartmouth
School of Law on April 8, 2016. Following opening remarks by Law
Review Conference Editor Samantha Seserman and Law Review Editor-in-Chief
Alex Rovzar and a Special Message from District
Attorney Tom Quinn on "How the Opioid Crisis is Prevalent in
Lawyering and the DA’s Office", police chiefs from Taunton,
Somerset and Canton spoke on how they handle those in possession of
opiates. Following lunch, judges Bernadette L. Sabra, Daniel J.
O’Shea, and Kevan Cunningham spoke about how they see the crisis in the
courtroom, and both DPH
Commissioner Monical Bharel and New Bedford psychiatrist Jonathan
Schwartz spoke about how doctors see the opioid crisis every day.
Fall River, which was one of a dozen
communities represented at a recent
forum, has seen a steady
rise in overdose deaths over the past several years, with numbers
moving from 16 in 2013 to 44 in 2014 and 36 in 2015. Click
here for the Herald News article. Click
here for a 10-minute 
video of a portion of the all-day forum. Click
here for photos of a recent forum by the Massachusetts
Department of Public Health's Bureau of Substance Abuse. For more
information on the topic, contact MassTAPP
Technical Assistance Specialist Carl Alves at 508-400-2977. |
