Star Tribune
Less than half of U.S. jails offer opioid addiction medication
Minnesota is not the only state seeking the green light from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. A spokeswoman for the federal agency said they have approved such waivers for 11 states and are reviewing applications from 12 states and the District of Colombia.
Not all jails or prisons will see the change if the state gets approved. The pilot program will include three state correctional facilities and seven local facilities. Sites that want to be part of the project need to apply, and DHS said Tuesday it is creating a competitive process to select the locations.
In additional to the Medicaid waiver project, Drucker said a workgroup to increase jail access to medications for opioid use disorder — co-chaired by the Minnesota Medical Association and Minnesota Sheriff’s Association — got started this summer. And he said the Department of Corrections is reviewing its rules for the minimum services that jails must offer, including requirements around health care and substance use disorders.
“Getting people treatment — good quality treatment including medications for opioid use disorder — while they’re incarcerated, helping them begin a recovery journey and then as they are exiting … having them return to healthy recovery ecosystems is both good for individuals, in terms of their personal health, but also for communities,” Drucker said. “It reduces recidivism and increases public safety.”
Almost two-thirds of people in U.S. jails have some type of active substance use disorder, the report from the NORC at the University of Chicago states. It cites another another study that found a 31% reduction in post-incarceration overdose deaths among people who received opioid use disorder medications while detained.
A man who died while rock climbing in a national monument in Wyoming over the weekend was from Eau Claire, Wis.
Stewart Porter, 21, was rappelling the second pitch of El Cracko Diablo in Devils Tower National Monument when he fell and sustained major injuries. Porter was pronounced dead by paramedics who arrived at the scene at about 8:40 p.m. Saturday, the National Park Service said in a statement.
Porter was with another man at the time. His partner was stranded, but was rescued by climbing guides, the Park Service said.
“While climbing fatalities at Devils Tower are infrequent, it is still inherently dangerous,” the Park Service said.
Porter’s death was the seventh climbing death recorded in more than a century of climbing at the geologic feature that protrudes out of the prairie surrounding the Black Hills, the Park Service said.
The poll’s findings are based on interviews with 800 likely Minnesota voters conducted Sept. 16-18. The poll’s margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Nearly three in four Minnesotans said they plan to vote in person on Election Day instead of voting early.
Half of the likely voters surveyed said they think voting by mail is protected from fraud, while 38% said they think it is vulnerable and 12% weren’t sure. Opinions differed starkly along party lines; 83% of Democrats said they believe voting by mail is protected from fraud, while 78% of Republicans said they think it is vulnerable.
Keith Blad, a 74-year-old Republican poll respondent from Darwin, Minn., is skeptical of voting by mail and said it should be limited to people who cannot physically make it to their polling place. Everyone else should have to submit their ballots in person, he said, and all voters should be required to show their driver’s license.
Blad said he believes the 2020 election was “stolen” from former President Donald Trump. Reviews in state after state upheld President Joe Biden’s victory.
“I don’t think it was a fair-run election,” said Blad, who plans to vote for Trump in November.
Six in 10 Minnesotans support federal marijuana legalization even though most said they hadn’t used the drug recently, according to a new poll.
The Star Tribune/MPR News/KARE 11 Minnesota Poll found that 61% of respondents support legalizing recreational marijuana for adults nationwide while 34% oppose it. A clear majority of Democrats and independents support federal legalization while most Republicans said they oppose it.
“I think the country’s experience with prohibition has been resoundingly negative,” said Michael Krause, a 70-year-old retiree from St. Louis Park who thinks marijuana should be treated the same as alcohol. “I’m not a fan of marijuana or any other intoxicant, particularly, but attempting to prevent people from obtaining it hasn’t worked. It’s only served to criminalize people who shouldn’t necessarily be considered criminals.”
Support for federal marijuana legalization varied along geographic lines, with 72% of voters in Hennepin and Ramsey counties favoring it compared with just 53% in northern Minnesota.
The poll’s findings are based on interviews with 800 likely Minnesota voters conducted Sept. 16-18. The poll’s margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
(Scroll to the end of this article for full results for each question. Click here for the poll methodology, a demographic breakdown of the sample and a map of the poll regions.)
This is the first time the Star Tribune has polled about federal marijuana legalization and personal use. A 2022 Star Tribune/MPR News/KARE 11 Poll found that 53% of voters supported legalizing recreational marijuana in Minnesota.
Minnesota legalized recreational marijuana for adults 21 and older the following year. Retail dispensaries are expected to open sometime in 2025. The state already has a robust market of hemp-derived edibles and beverages that adults can purchase at hemp shops, liquor stores, bars and breweries.
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