If the Court Suspects an Addiction: HB1126

Heretofore this blog has not discussed proposed legislation about the rights of convicted criminals and mental patients, based on a reasonable belief that nobody here is likely to have much firsthand insight into that aspect of Virginia law. Readers, what do you think? Am I being insufficiently paranoid?

Virginia House Bill #1126 contains provisions for testing a new set of terms of probation in the event that "the court suspects the offender has an addiction to, or dependence on, a controlled substance or substances." You don't use drugs...so is it possible that this bill could ever relate to you? 


Some other bills not discussed here contain provisions for dealing with people who, "in the judgment of a qualified" person, are mentally ill enough to need to be in hospitals. My feeling is that, for the past thirty years, far too many people who need to be hospitalized or at least supervised have been out on the streets. I'm not talking about the twitching, mumbling homeless people one sees in big cities; some of their brains were damaged by previous hospitalizations, but most of them are harmless. I'm talking about the perky, work-focussed employees who might describe themselves as "cheerleaders for Prozac" until they suddenly start reacting to pseudomemories with violence. I think that, if any of these people are allowed to leave hospital grounds before detoxification is complete, they need to be accompanied by "minders" who are qualified to return them to the hospital, fast. 


But what do these bills (and the existing laws some of them modify) have to do with drug-free people like us? Er, well...have you ever heard of an interested party bringing in a psychiatrist to certify that some rich older person was "incompetent" while the person was recovering from surgery and was still under the influence of sedative drugs? As a private nurse I've personally interfered with this despicable practice, and I can testify that this year's bills pertaining to "involuntary commitment" of mental patients aren't written for the purpose of interfering with it. Possibly, in case any of us ever become old or rich, we should be tracking these bills too.


This in mind, what about HB1126? How paranoid do you want to be? Is it possible that, even as a drug-free and law-abiding person who opposes "Agenda 21" or mandatory insurance gambling schemes or some other abomination that may have slipped through the legislature, you or I might someday be accused of something that would bring us into a court presided over by a judge who suspects that we're on drugs? 


If you see a need to be all that paranoid, here's the full text of HB1126:


http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?121+ful+HB1126