Helping without hurting

Begging for change

In August, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty continued its mission to decriminalize panhandling across the country. The group, joined by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others, sent letters to local and state governments asking them to repeal anti-panhandling laws, claiming the regulations violated the free speech of the homeless. Multiple states have laws against begging or panhandling, but since 2015, 25 lawsuits have successfully forced those laws to change. The lawsuits even target states such as Colorado and Iowa, where homelessness is not a comparatively big problem. Officials find themselves in the tough position of wanting to care for the homeless while maintaining order and safety in their communities. Supporters of the laws say they encourage people to find solutions to homelessness instead of prolonging their destitution. —C.C.

A nation in pain

The opioid crisis continued to sweep across the United States, with opioid overdose deaths increasing by 45 percent across the country from 2016 to 2017. Early this year, the government cracked down on websites that sold illegal drugs, particularly opioids. Using encrypted sections of the internet (called the “darknet”), dealers sold to anonymous buyers and mailed them the drugs. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions doubled the number of agents assigned to pursue online dealers this year.

In October the Senate passed a bipartisan bill called the Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment (SUPPORT) for Patients and Communities Act. The SUPPORT Act funds public health labs and provides more tools for states and communities to combat different aspects of the opioid epidemic. Trump signed it into law soon after. —C.C.

Traffic battle

In April, Trump signed a bill aimed at stopping online sex trafficking. The weeks immediately following saw a dramatic decrease in online ads for sex, due partly to the law and partly to the shutdown of Backpage.com, one of the worst offenders. Backpage was notorious for hosting ads for sex with minors, but its executives used legal loopholes to dodge consequences. In April, federal agents arrested the top executives of Backpage for money laundering and facilitating prostitution. When they shut down the site soon after, sex ads worldwide dropped. But several months later, the volume of these ads is back up almost to the same level it was before April, now on foreign sites the United States cannot regulate. The law was a good step, but much work still needs to be done. —C.C.