We had a networking meeting today at the Collin County Association of REALTORS and that is normal for a Tuesday we have them every week. What made this week different is that we had the company of Judge Charles Sandoval in attendance and he was in fact our featured speaker. Now he is an elected official and up for election but, all he said about that was don't forget to vote today.
The more important topic that he brought us was that there is a treatment that he found by attending a meeting a year ago in Chicago. He is sentencing people coming through or assigned in to his court to this treatment. He says that maybe 90 percent of his "offenders" are there due to a problem with drugs or acohol. This treatment is helping 70% of them stop the drug use-specifically meth. His cases cover things like burglaries, car breakins and even child abuse cases. All track back to the use of a drug of some sort. In Texas we do have a program in the jail system that takes a year to complete and most of the "offenders" aren't anxious to participate in that one-this other one is an injection treatment and a talking treatment that seems to work pretty well a 70% success rate and they will even ask for this sentence when given the choice of 1 month or 1 year I guess the choice is easy. The best part is the parole officers are the monitoring arm and it actually shrinks the part of the brain that crys out for the drug. He has already put 20 people through the program and the state has jumped on board with an allocation on $180,000 towards the program. It's not enough but, perhaps when they realize that it costs us probably closer to $30,000 to house someone in jail for just one year this is a better plan!
They have also brought it to the attention of the jails. There is a Doctor in Dallas Dr. Urshal who will administer the program for someone outside the correctional system for $12,000. The judge told us that is probably a deal for most meth users. This drug is called Prometa, the one for alcohol is called Vivitral. They are planning to try to get this information to the schools next. I already sent an e-mail to my principal with the information on the programs. What a gift, to have someone in the judicial system who cares enough to really try and solve the problems! He struck me as an amazing man, perhaps you know another amazing person in your town who needs this information. Judge Charles Sandoval is an elected judge for the 380 district court in Plano, Texas.
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