Should juveniles ages 16 and 17 be automatically charged as adults in criminal cases? Until this week, New York laws stated that they should.

On Sunday, April 9, New York approved legislation in the state budget to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 18. Under a new system, to be launched over the several years, 16- and 17-year-olds will go through the family court or new youth courts and be incarcerated in juvenile facilities instead of adult prisons.

Doctors would probably never think that prescribing medication to patients could land them in jail. After all, if someone is in pain it is the duty of medical professionals to help them, right?

According to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Center for Disease Control (CDC), there is a fine line between performing your duty of care and over-prescribing – particularly in terms of opioids.

Washington D.C. was the scene of a bizarre incident recently where an explosion at a police evidence vault left one person injured and a bevy of evidence in the vault “significantly” damaged. 150 packets of evidence were deemed “significantly damaged” out of the 52,000 narcotic evidence packets that were contained in the vault. The incident is still under investigation, but at this time a lot of questions are surrounding the evidence contained in the locker.

Let’s begin with the most obvious question: what does it mean for the evidence to be “significantly” damaged? The significance of the word “significantly” is profound in this context. Does it mean that the evidence is beyond recognition or unable to be analyzed? If so, would the cases tied to those pieces of evidence be thrown out?

Anyone who is charged with driving under the influence of drugs has a lot to lose. This is even more so the case if you hold a job as a teacher, police officer, or high-ranking business executive.

While driving under the influence of drugs may not be as common as driving under the influence of alcohol, it is still a major problem in the United States. For example, a 2010 survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration notes that approximately 10 million Americans drove under the influence of an illegal drug.

Authorities recently arrested several people whom the police say were selling drugs in what was described as a “quiet” neighborhood in upper Manhattan. Although the police arrested 21 people and brought them before a local judge, 11 other suspects reportedly remained at large. It is not clear whether additional arrests have been made.

The judge conducting the initial hearing entered not guilty pleas on behalf of those detained and ordered them to be remanded into custody without the possibility of bail. The group faces conspiracy and other allegations of committing drug crimes. The alleged leaders of the group face the possibility of between 25 years and a lifetime in prison, if convicted.

One of the major health crises in this country is the opioid epidemic. This situation has been getting a lot more press in recent months, but it has been going on for a long time now. Opioids are incredibly powerful — and addictive — substances that are often associated with medicinal care. Oftentimes, people innocently begin taking prescriotion opioids to treat some injury or pain condition, making the drugs easily available to people from all walks of life. This toxic combination has led to the opioid epidemic.

What it has also done is put a lot of focus on prescription drug charges. Many medicines can be abused and used in the same way as “traditional” drugs such as heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.  With the opioid epidemic in the headlines, police and prosecutors are certainly paying attention to people who possess, use or traffic these substances, moving the drug trade from the street corner setting into the medical and pharmaceutical office setting.

Drug sale and possession crimes can come with harsh sentences, especially if someone is charged in federal court. Any drug crimes can have serious consequences, so it’s important to have an attorney with experience in understanding criminal prosecution and trying drug cases.

According to the New York Post, a Pennsylvania man who police suspected of drug dealing was hiding 110 small bags of heroin in his buttocks. Police say the 32-year-old man was arrested in Scranton after police conducted an undercover drug buy. They found the drugs he was hiding in his buttocks when they were searching him after the arrest.

Many people here in New York and the Northeast — and, really, all across the country — know about Annie Dookhan and the criminal justice scandal that took place as a result of her actions. Dookhan was a lab technician at a facility that tested drug evidence for criminal cases. But Dookhan had a sinister plot while she was performing her job: she didn’t test many pieces of evidence, instead passing on reports that she had while making it seem like the evidence was indeed tested.

In the end, Dookhan was caught and she was sentenced to jail. But the ramifications of her actions are still being felt to this day.

In our last post, the topic of discussion was drug charges and the many different types of crimes that the police and prosecution use to charge someone with a criminal offense. Continuing that discussion, today we’re going to talk about the scheduling system, a classification system for drugs that determines how severe the punishment is for an offender and also limits the ability for the substance to be researched for medical purposes.

When you hear or read stories about people who are accused of drug crimes, the story is usually filled with details that seem like an ad-libs. Every charge is “drug ______” with the blank space being filled in with a wide array of potential accusations. After reading the list of charges that are often involved in these stories, it is no surprise that some people can’t distinguish the charges from each other, since they all seem to blend in.