The rapidly growing problem of heroin addiction in the United States is being targeted with a new approach by a growing number of judges. Deaths due to overdose have risen 45 percent nationally from 2006 to 2010.

“You’re not a criminal, you’re an addict,” Judge Robert Peeler told Cynthia Fugate, a twice-arrested heroin user. “Something is driving you to use heroin that is beyond your control. Is that fair to say?”

“Yes, sir,” she replied quietly. “I’m 30 years old. I’ve overdosed four times,” Fugate continued with deep fragility. “I want to be clean. I really do.”

Fugate received a gracious sentence, if she were willing, of a court-ordered mandate to monthly injections of the drug Vivitrol, an opiate-blocking drug costing $1000 per shot. Judge Robert Peeler, a common pleas court judge in Ohio’s Warren County, began researching drug treatment shots after the death of a young woman due to heroin overdose.

She was one of many heroin users whom he had faced in court, who later ended up dying from overdose. In 2012 alone, the State of Ohio reported the death of 680 individuals from heroin overdose, a 60 percent increase from 2011.

With such already drastic numbers on the rise, more and more judges are leaning towards sentencing heroin addicts to monthly Vivitrol injections. Skeptics, however, are questioning its efficacy in exchange for the time and expense required to bureaucratically monitor and fund its administration.

Sheriff Richard Jones of Butler County, Ohio referred to Vivitrol in jails “a waste of money,” citing the effective failure of an earlier pilot program in Warren County where only three of 12 subjects completed the program and stayed off drugs.

Peeler’s response, however, acknowledges that the high toll rate from overdose, and the high risk of relapse is worth giving the drug program a try. “To sit back and keep doing what we’ve been doing just isn’t going to get it,” Peeler said. “I want to stop people from dying.”

The State of Ohio is in agreement with judges like Peeler, and is providing $800 000 in funding for Vivitrol. Similar programs are also gaining effect in courts and prisons across 21 other states ranging from Massachusetts to Oregon.   is among those who say the high toll of heroin-related deaths, crime and prison recidivism make it worth trying.