Progress Not Perfection –
May 19, 2018 – Don’t call Delray Beach the drug relapse capital anymore. The city, once declared Ground Zero for the opioid epidemic, accounted for just four of Palm Beach County’s 168 drug deaths in the first quarter of 2018. And that success is prompting Fort Lauderdale and Pompano Beach to follow its example of imposing tougher sober home regulations. Sober homes, also known as recovery residences, are often the first stop for drug addicts fresh out of treatment. Cities have found that having a high concentration of them in one area leads to havoc. Angry residents complained about too many cars in one place, trashed belongings of relapsed clients thrown into the street and an unsavory element appearing in neighborhoods of single-family homes. The tougher regulations keep sober homes at least one city block from one another.
