The Criminalization of Addiction

The story of G. Scott Hancock is about my son who was raised in an upper-middle-income, dual-career family and earned a bachelor's degree in finance from the University of Missouri. When 16 and 17 years old, Scott was prescribed OxyContin for painful kidney stones, which began a long journey of opioid dependence that ended in fentanyl. At 29, Scott shared fentanyl with a co-addict/friend, who subsequently died from an overdose. Four months later, the DEA arrested him under the 1986 drug-induced homicide laws, and he is now serving 20 years in federal prison.