Strategy for sober homes

Grand jury calls for new rules

State lawmakers should act quickly to craft new regulations and hire more personnel to strengthen oversight of South Florida’s booming $1 billion drug treatment industry, according to 37-page report released Monday by a Palm Beach County grand jury.

The list of recommendations from the 21-member grand jury is a significant statement of the public’s attitudes toward the rising heroin death toll and proliferation of halfway houses known as sober homes, said Dave Aronberg, state attorney for Palm Beach County.

“It’s an expression of the sentiments of our community,” he said at a news conference. “I what is powerful about it is that it is a cross-section of the community that came up with this — not stakeholders, not selfselected activists. These are people chosen at random.”

The grand jury, which was convened by Aronberg and met for three months, found that South Florida’s drug treatment industry is plagued by “deceptive marketing, insurance fraud and patient brokering.”

While some sober homes provide excellent care, many una regulated homes “have become unsafe and overcrowded ‘flophouses’ where crimes like rape, theft, human trafficking, prostitution and illegal drug use are commonplace,” according to the report.

Such deliberations of the grand jury are rare and are reserved only for the most pressing matters of public concern, Aronberg said. This is believed to be the first grand jury recomthink