New Jersey governor has opened his state’s first rehab facility for prisoners, cut insurance red tape and emphasized treatment over punishment
At 10am on a Thursday, Alan Oberman’s methadone clinic in Pleasantville, New Jersey, is bustling with people and life. Parents are yelling, babies crying, and smokers smoking. With the beach nearby and fresh-cut grass in the graveyard across the street, it feels like a neighborhood and smells like summer.
The clients are of all types: men and women, bespectacled and tattooed, clean-cut and unkempt, young parents with children in tow and grandparents alike.
Michelle Armstrong, 34, drives 45 minutes each way with her boyfriend to arrive at the treeless strip mall where the Pleasantville clinic is located. “I can’t do it with nothing,” said Armstrong, who said she has been clean for three months.