First responders discuss the barriers to responding to the opioid crisis

First responders Chas Carlson, Joe Sobol, Craig Hall and Eric Miller talked about their experience fighting on what are essentially the front lines of the opioid crisis. Carlson is an EMT, Sobol and Hall are paramedics and Miller is an officer from Delaware County.

They all had some form of criticism for how the city has been attempting to or plans to deal with addiction. One of the most interesting things Miller talked about was the misunderstanding of the Good Samaritan Law and its limitations. This will be a good sidebar for my story because while the concept of the Good Samaritan Law is great, its limitations are important to shed a light on. Miller said some people don’t call police because they’re afraid of being arrested for using drugs. The Good Samaritan Law protects people from that, but it doesn’t protect people who have a warrant.

Julie Christie

Julie is a junior journalism major with a minor in criminal justice. She's the Enterprise Editor for The Temple News, Temple University's independent student-run newspaper. There, she coordinates long-term reporting projects and slowly hacks away at the newspaper's website. Last summer, she interned at The Reentry Project, a 15-newsroom collaboration in Philadelphia that produced concentrated reporting on prisoner reentry in the city. She loves working with big data and code and spends her free time finding new ways to cook potatoes and watching sci-fi shows. Contact Julie at julie.christie@temple.edu.