In the early moments of "Chasing Heroin," a new "Frontline" documentary that will air Tuesday on PBS and online at 9 p.m. EST, a police van pulls down a Seattle alley and stops near a pair of heroin addicts. A cop gets out of the van and assures them that he means no harm.
“I gotcha,” he says, “You’re getting well. No big deal. I’m not going to jam you up.”
The officer merely wants to know who the addicts are and offer them connections to a social worker -- and, maybe down the line, to treatment. Decades into the war on drugs, the exchange is jarring for what it doesn’t include: an arrest.
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