Similar Stories to Addict-turned-mayor Calls For New Kind Of War On Drugs on Bing News

"Hi, Shane," the roomful of drug court defendants and law enforcement officials called back. For the next 30 minutes, all listened as Nickerson recounted his journey from teenage addict to mayor in charge of the same police force that once hassled him as a youth with a penchant for death metal, delinquency and drugs. For now, he is the mayor of Blossburg, a tiny town roughly an hour east of here on Route 6, a two-lane asphalt ribbon lined on either side by seasonal motels, one-horse towns and Marcellus Shale wellsites. Many see him as an unconventional asset in the fight against a growing local drug problem. Many who sell drugs like heroin to support their habits and who blur the lines between respective ends in a supply chain. Drug courts or prison diversion programs like this one in Potter County have emerged in response to, or alongside, that debate. Senior Judge John Leete called the defendants forward, one by one, to press them on their commitment to sobriety, their patronage of required 12-step meetings, and their overall compliance with the rigors of the program. Leete has lost young people he's mentored to addiction, and watched as friends were forced to bury a son. At the end of each appearance, defendants were applauded by the county's top prosecutor, other law enforcement officials and by each other. [...] Leete, a long-time jurist whose case history includes the Paterno family's lawsuit against the NCAA, was a constant source of moral support. If this doesn't sound like the American criminal justice system you know, that's because it's not. The meteoric rise of heroin addiction over the last decade, and some would argue its large-scale movement into white communities, has coincided with a reevaluation of decades' worth of hard-nosed, Nixon-era enforcement methods, now viewed as draconian and misguided by an increasing number of Americans. [...] a closer look reveals a pristine wilderness suffe