The National Judicial College

Honorable William G. Meyer (Ret.). Judge William G. Meyer was a general jurisdiction judge from 1984 to 2000 in Denver, CO, and co-founder and first presiding judge of the Denver Drug Court (1993), the 12th Drug Court in the country. In 2000, he joined Judicial Arbiter Group, a mediation/arbitration firm comprised of 26 former judges and became majority owner in 2011. For the last 8 years, he has been recognized as a “Best Lawyer in America” in the field of mediation by US News and World Report. He received “Colorado Lawyer of the Year” honors from Best Lawyers in the field of mediation (2020) and Colorado’s “Barrister Best” awards in both mediation (2011, 2014, 2016) and arbitration (2017, 2019, 2020). Judge Meyer serves as the Senior Judicial Fellow for the National Drug Court Institute and provides training and curriculum development for over 3,700 drug courts. He chaired the committee that wrote the Bureau of Justice Assistance’s Drug Court Key Components (1997). He is an alumnus of The National Judicial College (NJC) and is on the NJC’s Wall of Honor. In 2017, he received the NADCP Stanley Goldstein Award for preeminent service to the drug court field. Judge Meyer is the author of Federal Sentencing Reporter’s Drug Courts Work (2002) and Colorado Rules of Evidence with Objections (2020-Sixth Edition). He is a contributing author and co-editor of the National Drug Court Institute’s The Drug Court Judicial Benchbook (2011) and recently published an article in the Journal for Advancing Justice (2019), analyzing cases involving access to MAT and “drug free” conditions of probation. Judge Meyer established and maintains a national webliography of case-law on constitutional and other legal issues arising in the drug court field. Judge Meyer joined the faculty of The National Judicial College in 1991 and is considered one of its distinguished faculty.

This webcast was developed for judges—whether presiding over state, municipal, general jurisdiction, treatment/specialty courts and/or whether they are law trained or not.

Opioid use disorders (OUDs) are associated with criminal behavior, arrest, and incarceration. Effective treatments are needed to reduce the burden of OUDs on public safety and on the public health. Fortunately, there are medications approved for the treatment of opioid dependence. This webinar will focus on the legal and practical implications around the use of medications for OUDs.

At the conclusion of this activity, learners should be able to:

• Recognize the efficacy of medications in the treatment of opiate use disorders (OUD);
• Cite the barriers to the use of medications for substance use disorders;
• Discuss the constitutional and statutory constraints in blanket prohibitions of medications for OUD;
• Describe the practical impact of restraints on medications for OUD; and
• Identify effective approaches to the use of medications for OUD that may overcome certain barriers.

Funding for this initiative was made possible (in part) by grant no. 1H79TI081968 from SAMHSA. The views expressed in written conference materials or publications and by speakers and moderators do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department of Health and Human Services; nor does mention of trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.