News
Mental Ills May Put Veterans at Higher Odds for Heart Trouble
Mental Ills May Put Veterans at Higher Odds for Heart Trouble Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2019 HealthDay News Veterans who suffer from depression, anxiety, psychosis or bipolar disorder are more likely to suffer a heart attack, [...]
If E-Cigs Were Romaine Lettuce, They’d Be Off The Shelf, Vaper’s Mom Tells Congress
September 24, 2019 By: Allison Aubrey NPR A top official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned federal lawmakers Tuesday that a new generation of e-cigarettes now on the market is "even more [...]
These Newborn Babies Cry for Drugs, Not Milk
These Newborn Babies Cry for Drugs, Not Milk By Nicholas Kristof September 7, 2019 CHARLESTON, W.Va. — His body dependent on opioids, he writhes, trembles and cries. He is exhausted but cannot sleep. He vomits, barely [...]
Death, made in Mexico: Traffickers embrace fentanyl
Death, made in Mexico: Traffickers embrace fentanyl By KATE LINTHICUM September 1, 2019 Melissa and Daryl McKinsey first heard about “Mexican Oxy” last year when their 19-year-old son Parker called in tears. “I need to [...]
Reno community celebrates ‘International Overdose Awareness Day’
Reno community celebrates 'International Overdose Awareness Day' by Zachary Slotemaker August 29, 2019 RENO, Nev. (News 4 & Fox 11) — Around a hundred Reno community members came together Thursday afternoon for "International Overdose Awareness Day." [...]
I didn’t want heavy painkillers after surgery — but my hospital pushed opioids on me anyway
Emma Passé Hospitals want to keep their patients happy, but too often doctors treat pain like a disease and push opioids even when people explicitly say no. This is a story about how the health [...]
U.S. Surgeon General’s Spotlight on Opioids
The Spotlight on Opioids assembles opioid-related information from the Surgeon General’s Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health into one document to better inform the general public, especially family and friends of people with an elevated [...]
Poll: Most Americans Know About Opioid Antidote And Are Willing To Use It
SCOTT HENSLEY U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams made a plea in April for more Americans to be prepared to administer naloxone, an opioid antidote, in case they or people close to them suffer an overdose. [...]
Patients With Chronic Pain Feel Caught In An Opioid-Prescribing Debate
By Will Stone It started with a rolled ankle during a routine Army training exercise. Shannon Hubbard never imagined it was the prologue to one of the most debilitating pain conditions known to exist, called [...]
A Surge In Meth Use In Colorado Complicates Opioid Recovery
Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday JOHN DALEY Huddled at a computer screen at the Denver Recovery Group, counselor Melissa McConnell looks at the latest urinalysis results for her client, Sara Florence. Last fall, it lit [...]
Scientists can track the spread of opioids in sewers. But do cities want to know what lies below?
By JUSTIN CHEN JUNE 26, 2018 The French novelist Victor Hugo described the sewage system as “the consciousness of the city,” a place where there are no secrets. Transporting millions of gallons of wastewater, the [...]
Origins of an Epidemic: Purdue Pharma Knew Its Opioids Were Widely Abused
By Barry Meier Purdue Pharma, the company that planted the seeds of the opioid epidemic through its aggressive marketing of OxyContin, has long claimed it was unaware of the powerful opioid painkiller’s growing abuse until years [...]
More U.S. kids overdosing on ADHD drugs
By Lisa Rapaport The surge in U.S. kids taking medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is having an unintended side effect, a new study suggests: more children and teens are overdosing on these drugs. Nationwide, [...]
The problem isn’t opioids — it’s how we’re raising our kids
BY MELISSA TASSÉ Let’s start with the obvious. Our nation is suffering from the scourge of an opioid epidemic—in the form of addiction to opioid-based painkillers and heroin — that is creating anxiety, fear, and [...]
As ADHD Diagnoses Increased, So Did Calls to Poison Control
By Gaby Galvin A NEW STUDY IS SOUNDING the alarm about misuse of medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. There were 156,365 calls to poison control centers for people under 20 who were improperly exposed to ADHD medication [...]
What Explains The Rising Overdose Rate Among Latinos?
By Martha Bebinger The tall, gangly man twists a cone of paper in his hands as stories from nearly 30 years of addiction pour out: the robbery that landed him in prison at 17; never [...]
The Pain Hustlers
By Evan Hughes Selling drugs is a relationship business. It’s best to do it in person. That is why, on a summer evening in 2012, Alec Burlakoff was out for dinner with Steven Chun, the [...]
5 unintended consequences of addressing the opioid crisis
By SARAH KARLIN-SMITH and BRIANNA EHLEY The crackdown on opioids is having unintended consequences. The push for fewer opioid prescriptions at lower doses and for shorter periods has increased suffering for some pain patients including those near the [...]
Surgeon general says opioid addiction harming U.S. economy
By Dave Sharos U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams believes the problem of opioid addiction is not only affecting the nation’s health, but the economy and our security as well. “The facts are that seven out [...]
Opioid Epidemic So Dangerous, Says CDC, It’s Finally Killing As Many Americans As Guns
By Ethan Siegel If you want to know what's dangerous to Americans, the place to look is the CDC: the Centers for Disease Control. Studying all causes of death, disease, and preventative measures, they're the most [...]
Omissions On Death Certificates Lead To Undercounting Of Opioid Overdoses
By Jake Harper In a refrigerator in the coroner's office in Marion County, Ind., rows of vials await testing. They contain blood, urine and vitreous, the fluid collected from inside a human eye. In overdose [...]
Certain Teens More Likely to Get Hooked on Opioids
By Dennis Thompson MONDAY, March 12, 2018 (HealthDay News) -- Teenagers with any mental health problem are more prone to painkiller dependence after receiving a prescription opioid, a new study finds. The odds of progressing [...]
Texas college students, fearing opioid deaths, teach each other to reverse overdoses
By Lindsay Ellis A new network of college students is hoping to ward off a terrifying prospect: Discovering a friend, blue lipped with shallow breathing, dying from an opioid overdose. Students at the University of Texas [...]
Rehab Riviera: Addiction advertising can trick you to death
By TERI SFORZA People looking to quit alcohol or other drugs typically find treatment the same way they might search for take-out food or a mechanic – by typing search words into Google. Once there, addicts [...]
Jump In Overdoses Shows Opioid Epidemic Has Worsened
By Rob Stein There's more bad news about the nation's devastating opioid epidemic. In just one year, overdoses from opioids jumped by about 30 percent, according to a report released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [...]
The Opioid Crisis Is Surging In Black, Urban Communities
By Marisa Penaloza The current drug addiction crisis began in rural America, but it's quickly spreading to urban areas and into the African-American population in cities across the country. "It's a frightening time," says Dr. [...]
How best to treat opioids’ youngest sufferers? No one knows.
LINDSEY TANNER Two babies, born 15 months apart to the same young woman overcoming opioid addiction. Two very different treatments. Sarah Sherbert’s first child was whisked away to a hospital special-care nursery for two weeks [...]
Why the opioid epidemic may have fueled America’s murder spike
By German Lopez Over the past few years, America saw its murder rate rise — in 2015, 2016, and, according to the most recent data, the first half of 2017. Meanwhile, an opioid epidemic has led to the deadliest [...]
Economic cost of the opioid crisis: $1 trillion and growing faster
By Dan Mangan The economic cost of the growing opioid epidemic topped an estimated $1 trillion from 2001 through 2017, according to an analysis released Tuesday. And the opioid crisis is projected to cost the [...]
Failing health of the United States
By Steven H Woolf, director Laudan Aron, senior fellow The role of challenging life conditions and the policies behind them Life expectancy in the US has fallen for the second year in a row.1 This is alarming because [...]
Opioid epidemic top priority for surgeon general
BY Alvin Powell The opioid epidemic is U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams’ top priority and his position’s bully pulpit is his most potent weapon to effect change. Because of that, Adams has publicly shared his own [...]
Risk of opioid misuse jumps 44% with each refill, study finds
By Brian Zimmerman While most clinical efforts to mitigate the risk of opioid misuse have focused on limiting dosage levels, reducing the length of an opioid prescription actually has greater influence over the risk of [...]
Did Americans Turn to Opioids Out of Despair – or Just Because They Were There?
By Eric Levitz Between 1999 and 2013, the death rate for white, middle-aged, working-class Americans increased by 22 percent. This explosion in premature deaths was driven by a surge in opioid overdoses, alcohol-related fatalities, and suicides. [...]
Fueled by drug crisis, U.S. life expectancy declines for a second straight year
By Lenny Bernstein and Christopher Ingraham American life expectancy at birth declined for the second consecutive year in 2016, fueled by a staggering 21 percent rise in the death rate from drug overdoses, the Centers for Disease Control and [...]
This Dad Is Warning Other Parents About Safely Storing Medications After His Daughter’s Tragic Death
By Korey Lane Being a parent is a beautiful and terrifying thing, as just about any parent will tell you. And now, this dad is warning other parents after his daughter's tragic death, which he says was totally [...]
Pharmacists Play Key Role in Protecting Children from Prescription Meds
By Anthony Vecchione India pharmaceutical giant Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, recently settled a case with the U.S. Justice Department regarding prescription drug packaging that had not undergone proper testing for child safety, as required by the U.S. [...]
Overcoming Opioids: Struggles for Recovery
It’s hard to say whether businessman Kyle Graves hit rock bottom when he shot himself in the ankle so emergency room doctors would feed his opioid habit or when he broke into a safe to [...]
Former methadone clinic doctor says he was told to “get them on a high dose and keep them there”
By Adam Walser PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - Florida is ground zero for the opioid crisis, with more than 5,000 overdose deaths a year. Methadone, which is a drug used to reduce withdrawal symptoms, is one [...]
Counterfeit opioid pills are tricking users — sometimes with lethal results
By Katie Zezima More than two dozen patients were rushed into an emergency room in Macon, Ga., over two days with the same array of life-threatening symptoms, including organ failure and sepsis, flummoxing doctors. But after [...]
Analysis | History suggests that the deadly opioid epidemic shares chilling similarities with the past
By Mike Stobbe NEW YORK — While declaring the opioid crisis a national public health emergency Thursday, President Donald Trump said: “Nobody has seen anything like what’s going on now.” He was right, and he was [...]
New App Maps Overdose Epidemic in Real Time
By Christine Vestal In the summer of 2016, drug overdose deaths in Baltimore were exploding and health commissioner Dr. Leana Wen told federal Drug Enforcement Administration officials the city needed real-time data to better manage its [...]
Over-the-counter painkillers treated painful injuries just as well as opioids in new study
By Melissa Healy n an opioid epidemic that currently claims an average of 91 lives per day, there have been many paths to addiction. For some, it started with a fall or a sports injury, [...]
1 In 4 American Directly Impacted By Opioid Misuse; NSC Launches Education Campaign To Save Lives
At a provocative memorial to victims, NSC unveils new data showing the scope of the opioid epidemic and distributes first-of-their-kind “Warn Me” labels in attempt to Stop Everyday Killers. Chicago, IL – According to a [...]
Drug OD Rate Now Higher in Rural U.S. Than Cities: CDC
By Robert Preidt Friday, October 20, 2017 FRIDAY, Oct. 20, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Drug overdose death rates in rural areas of the United States are now higher than in cities, a trend that worries [...]
Nearly a Third of College Kids Think ADHD Meds Boost Grades
MONDAY, Oct. 16, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Many college students who abuse ADHD drugs mistakenly believe that doing so will lead to better grades, a new survey suggests. Past research has found that college students [...]
Opioid Use May Explain 20% of Drop in American Men’s Labor-Force Participation
By Agnel Philip Opioid use by American men may account for one-fifth of the decline in their participation in the U.S. labor force, according to a study by Princeton University economist Alan Krueger. “The opioid [...]
Study: Opioid Users Don’t See Overdose as Wakeup Call
By Matt Wynn, Staff Writer, MedPage Today August 23, 2017 Turns out, even a close call with an overdose isn't enough to deter opioid users. As described in a JAMA research letter, Julie M. Donohue, PhD, of the University of [...]
Hospices Struggle to Stop Opioid Theft When Patients Die at Home
by Kaiser Health News Nothing seemed to help the patient — and hospice staff didn’t know why. They sent home more painkillers for weeks. But the elderly woman, who had severe dementia and incurable breast cancer, [...]
The Pains of Prescribing Opioids
By Suneel Kamath, MD August 21, 2017 Most doctors would say they went into medicine to help people by making them feel better or live longer. Sometimes helping people means refusing to do what they want. One [...]
Dentists: On the Front Line of the Opioid Epidemic
By Erin McHenry For years, family gatherings had become contentious for Harold Tu, D.M.D., M.D., director of the Division of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry. Somehow, conversations always drifted to opioids. [...]
Teen drug overdose death rate climbed 19% in one year
By Nadia Kounang, CNN (CNN) The rate of teen drug overdose deaths in the United States climbed 19% from 2014 to 2015, from 3.1 deaths per 100,000 teens to 3.7 per 100,000, according to data released [...]
U.S. Opioid Crisis Continues to Worsen
By Dennis Thompson TUESDAY, Aug. 8, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Drug overdose deaths continue to climb in the United States, despite efforts to combat the nation's ongoing opioid addiction crisis, a new federal report states. The [...]
Trump says opioids are a national emergency. Here’s what happens next.
By Christopher Ingraham President Trump on Thursday said he considers the opioid crisis to be “a national emergency,” starting a process aimed at giving the federal and state governments more resources and flexibility to deal with the epidemic. “The [...]
Opioid-Related Deaths Might Be Underestimated: CDC
By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter April 25, 2017 America's prescription drug abuse epidemic may be even more deadly than expected, a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests. Some opioid-related [...]
Deadly Fentanyl Changes the Rules for Those Who Abuse Opioids
By Martha Bebinger WBUR April 11, 2017 There's a clear culprit in the rising drug overdose death count in Massachusetts -- the synthetic opioid fentanyl. More powerful and more deadly than heroin, fentanyl has sparked [...]
Kids Getting Hands on Adults’ Pain Pills, Study Finds
By JoAnne Viviano The Columbus Dispatch March 20,2017 Poison-control centers nationwide receive calls about children and teenagers exposed to opioid-prescription pain pills an average of 32 times a day, a new study shows. That's once [...]
Opioid Painkillers and Xanax or Valium a Deadly Mix: Study
By Steven Reinberg HealthDay News March 15, 2017 Mixing opioid painkillers with common anxiety and sleep medications is a prescription for a deadly overdose, a new U.S. study shows. Of all fatal overdoses from narcotic medications, [...]
How Taking Painkillers for My Basketball Injury Spiraled Into a Heroin Addiction
By Liz Cohen as told to Charlotte Hilton Andersen SHAPE March 13, 2017 Ninth grade was the year everything fell apart for me. One minute I was the star player on a highly competitive basketball [...]
Lethal Opiates Delivered By Mail From China, Killing Addicts In The U.S.
Arun Rath NPR: Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday March 11, 2017 Carfentanil is an opiate 10,000 times more powerful than morphine. And since last summer, it's been killing addicts and confounding first responders across the [...]
Surgeons Were Told to Stop Prescribing So Many Painkillers. The Results Were Remarkable.
By Lenny Bernstein The Washington Post March 7, 2017 The head of general surgery at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center had a remarkably simple idea not long ago: What if the department suggested that surgeons limit prescriptions [...]
Alert Issued for Non-Narcotic Pain Pill That’s Increasingly Abused
by Michele Newell ABCNews 6 March 6, 2017 An alert was issued out about a pill that doctors say heroin addicts are now abusing. The Ohio Substance Abuse Monitoring Network sent out the alert about [...]
After The Save: A Drug Can Reverse an Overdose. Then What?
By: Arielle Levin Becker The Connecticut Mirror January 25, 2017 Dr. William Horgan has seen his share of patients go through life-changing experiences – and the changes that come from them. “A chronic smoker who [...]
Resetting Household Rules Important for Teens With Substance Use Disorders
Partnership For Drug-Free Kids By: Celia Vimont January 5, 2017 Setting new household rules for teens in treatment for a substance use disorder can be challenging for parents. But it is important because research shows [...]
Opioids and Alcohol a Dangerous Cocktail
Healthday News February 8, 2017 Drinking alcohol while taking powerful opioid painkillers can trigger a potentially deadly respiratory problem, particularly in seniors, a new study warns. "Unfortunately, we're seeing more fatalities and people in emergency [...]
Kids of the Opioid Epidemic Find Out They’re Not Alone
By Reilly Capps Rooster January 30, 2017 They are the smallest victims of America's biggest drug crisis. In a nondescript brick building in Aurora, Colo., a bunch of kids, ranging in age from age 7 [...]
Arizona Medical Boards Can Take Years to Penalize Doctors Who Overprescribe
By Agnel Philip and Emily L. Mahoney Cronkite News January 5, 2017 One patient, a 29-year-old woman, was prescribed a dangerous cocktail of anti-anxiety drugs and opioids by her Fort Mohave doctor after a car [...]
What’s Next After Naloxone?
By Tessie Castillo The Fix January 1, 2017 Naloxone has saved countless lives from overdose, but first responders are finding themselves reviving the same people over and over again. Where do we go from here? [...]
Cambridge PD Getting Results From Program to Break Narcan Cycle
Fox News 25 January 11, 2017 The front lines to battle drug addiction has gotten more aggressive in Cambridge, with police adding a new technique to connect people to help. For one recovering heroin addict, [...]
Drug Overdose Deaths Climb Dramatically in U.S.
By Dennis Thompson HealthDay December 20, 2016 Drug overdose deaths continue to surge in the United States, with most fatalities linked to the illicit use of prescription painkillers, new government statistics reveal. Drug overdose deaths increased [...]
OxyContin Goes Global — “We’re Only Just Getting Started”
By Harriet Ryan, Lisa Girton & Scott Glover Los Angeles Times December 18, 2016 OxyContin is a dying business in America. This is the third part of a Los Angeles Times investigation exploring the role of OxyContin [...]
The Opioid Crisis Sweeps Through Cherokee Nation
By Megan Thielking STAT DECEMBER 15, 2016 Dr. Anna Miller sits with her legs pulled up, boots kicked off, in an exam chair at Cherokee Nation W.W. Hastings Hospital. She’s waiting for her first Suboxone patient [...]
‘Drug Dealer, M.D.’: Misunderstandings And Good Intentions Fueled Opioid Epidemic
NPR; Heard on Fresh Air December 15, 2016 America's attitude toward pain has shifted radically over the past century. Psychiatrist Anna Lembke says that 100 years ago, the medical community thought that pain made patients stronger. "Doctors [...]
As Opioids Ravage the U.S., Teen Students Show Steady Decline in Use
By Kimberly Leonard U.S. News December 13, 2016 High school students are trying opioids like prescription painkillers and heroin less and less, a new study shows, even amid an opioid epidemic that's contributing to an alarming [...]
Where Opiates Killed the Most People in 2015
By Christopher Ingraham The Washington Post December 13, 2016 More than 33,000 people died of opioid overdoses in the United States last year.But speaking of an “opiate epidemic” is in some ways a misnomer. The latest data from [...]
Opioid Epidemic is Getting Worse, Says CDC
By Steve Almasy CNN December 9, 2016 The number of deaths from overdoses of illicit opioids rose sharply again in 2015, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday. "The epidemic of deaths involving [...]
Rural Hospitals See Surge in Opioid-Dependent Babies
By Alan Mozes HealthDay December 12, 2016 Rural U.S. communities are seeing a surge in infants experiencing opioid withdrawal at birth because of widespread drug abuse by pregnant women, a new study finds. These tiny victims [...]
The Great Opioid Epidemic
By Editorial Board The Washington Post December 11, 2016 AN ALL-TIME record 52,404 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2015, according to the latest datareleased Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Once [...]
One-third of Long-term Users Say They’re Hooked on Prescription Opioids
By Scott Clement and Lenny Bernstein The Washington Post December 9, 2016 One-third of Americans who have taken prescription opioids for at least two months say they became addicted to, or physically dependent on, [...]
Former Execs Charged With Bribing Doctors to Prescribe Potent Painkiller
By DAVID ARMSTRONG STAT News DECEMBER 8, 2016 The former chief executive of Insys Therapeutics and several other former executives were arrested Thursday on federal charges of conspiring to bribe doctors to prescribe a prescription version [...]
Millennials Took Adderall to Get Through School. Now They’ve Taken Their Addiction to the Workplace.
By: Carey Dunne Quartz October 19, 2016 In 2010, when Raphael was a first-semester college freshman struggling to get through finals, he did what it seemed like all his friends were doing: he got an [...]
New Smartphone App Helps Doctors Treat Opioid Addiction
By Thomas G. Ciccone Practical Pain Managment October 21, 2016 With a new push to combat the opioid abuse epidemic, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has launched a new smartphone app [...]
The drug industry’s answer to opioid addiction: More pills
By Ariana Eunjung Cha The Washington Post October 16, 2016 UNNATURAL CAUSES SICK AND DYING IN SMALL-TOWN AMERICA: Since the turn of this century, death rates have risen for whites in midlife, particularly women. In [...]
An Opioid Spray Showered Billionaire John Kapoor In Riches. Now He’s Feeling The Pain
By: Matthew Herper and Michela Tindera Forbes October 25, 2016 On Mar. 25, 2016 Sarah Fuller, 32, was supposed to drop her mother’s car at the shop. Her mom called at 8 a.m. to make sure [...]
Not just for medics: Drugs that reverse opioid overdoses are being pushed to the masses
By: Andrew Joseph STAT October 3, 2016 BALTIMORE — After two decades of sending a needle exchange van around this city, officials here last year started doing something new. They wouldn’t just hand out clean [...]
Opioid crisis in rural areas may be tackled through telemedicine
By Shefali Luthra The Washington Post September 27, 2016 GILES COUNTY, Va. — Robert Devereaux is a family physician in this southwest corner of Virginia, where problems surrounding prescription opioid use far outstrip the capacity of [...]
Countless Opioid Pills Unused by Dental-Surgery Patients
HealthDay News Sept. 27, 2016 More than half of the narcotic painkillers prescribed after wisdom teeth removal go unused, according to a new study that suggests this could contribute to the U.S. opioid epidemic. "When [...]
There are more opioid prescriptions than people in Tennessee
By: Holly Fletcher The Tennessean September 19, 2016 Health care professionals in Tennessee last year wrote more than 7.8 million opioid prescriptions — or 1.18 for every man, woman and child — even as the state grapples with a scourge [...]
Drugmakers Fought State Opioid Limits Amid Crisis
By The Associated Press September 18, 2016 The makers of prescription painkillers have adopted a 50-state strategy that includes hundreds of lobbyists and millions in campaigning contributions to help kill or weaken measures aimed at [...]
Pro-painkiller echo chamber shaped policy as drug epidemic widened in US
By MATTHEW PERRONE and BEN WIEDER THE ASSOCIATED PRESS and CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY For more than a decade, members of a little-known group called the Pain Care Forum have blanketed Washington with messages [...]
Risky Alone, Deadly Together
By: Kimberly Kindy, Dan Keating The Washington Post August 31, 2016 Karen Franklin leans against the sink in the pink-tiled bathroom of her childhood home, counting out pills. There’s a purple morphine tablet for chronic back [...]
FDA requires strong warnings for opioid analgesics, prescription opioid cough products, and benzodiazepine labeling related to serious risks and death from combined use
After an extensive review of the latest scientific evidence, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced today that it is requiring class-wide changes to drug labeling, including patient information, to help inform health care providers [...]
Mommy’s Little Helper: The Quiet Side of an Epidemic
For years, Amanda Fink's mother shared her pain pills as a form of maternal comfort. Her mother had scar tissue after a hysterectomy, and with that came a long-standing prescription for OxyContin. "When I was [...]
Fake Xanax Cut With Potent Pain Med Can Be a Killer
By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter TUESDAY, Aug. 9, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- At least one San Francisco-area drug user died and eight more landed in the ER in late 2015 after taking counterfeit Xanax tablets [...]
Doctors Urged to Prescribe Lower Doses of Opioids, No Refills
TUESDAY, Aug. 9, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Patients who are first-time users of pain-killing opioids should be prescribed a small dose without refills to reduce the risk of long-term use and possible addiction, a new [...]
Improper Medication Use Rising Among Older Adults
Problems Taking Medications Many older adults take medications that treat health conditions like pain and heart disease. Most take their medications properly, but some older adults have problems taking them the way they should. This [...]
Opioid Dependence Leads To ‘Tsunami’ Of Medical Services, Study Finds
By Julie Appleby Kaiser Health News August 1, 2016 In one of the first looks at privately insured patients with opioid problems, researchers paint a grim picture: Medical services for people with opioid dependence diagnoses [...]
Pain Raises Risk of Opioid Addiction
FRIDAY, July 22, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- The more pain they have, the more likely people are to become addicted to powerful prescription opioid painkillers, a new study suggests. "In light of the national opioid [...]
More than 1 million OxyContin pills ended up in the hands of criminals and addicts. What the drugmaker knew
By HARRIET RYAN, LISA GIRION AND SCOTT GLOVER JULY 10, 2016 Los Angeles Times In the waning days of summer in 2008, a convicted felon and his business partner leased office space on a seedy [...]
Are We Ignoring an Escalating Benzodiazapine Epidemic?
By Indra Cidambi MD 06/09/16 Deaths from benzodiazepine overdose have grown at a faster rate than deaths from opiate overdose each year for thirteen consecutive years. What can we do now to arrest or reverse [...]
FDA panel backs approval of Pfizer’s opioid painkiller
BY TONI CLARKE A U.S. advisory panel on Wednesday recommended approval of Pfizer Inc's long-acting opioid painkiller Troxyca ER, saying it dulls pain and its design could deter abuse by addicts in search of a [...]
I’m a stay-at-home mom. I’m an addict.
By Jen Simon June 6, 2016 Since his death, there have been countless articles speculating why a man as rich and famous as Prince would “allow” himself to become addicted to painkillers. But no one [...]
Rates of Non-medical Prescription Opioid use and Opioid Use Disorder Double in a Decade
Non-medical use of prescription opioids more than doubled among adults in the United States from 2001-2002 to 2012-2013, based on a study from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Nearly 10 million [...]
Doctors Wrestle With Mixed Messages When Deciding Whether To Prescribe Painkillers
Steve Diaz, an emergency medicine doctor at Augusta’s MaineGeneral Health, says he knows what patients want when they come to him in pain. Drugs. And preferably strong ones. “The only thing they think of is, [...]
Drug Monitoring Programs Do Curb Overdose Deaths: Study
THURSDAY, June 23, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Drug monitoring programs appear to help reduce deaths from prescription painkillers called opioids, a new study finds. In an effort to curb overdose deaths from powerful painkillers such [...]
Deaths from the drug that killed Prince are skyrocketing in N.J.
By Stephen Stirling NJ Advance Media for NJ.com June 16, 2016 Fentanyl, an opioid up to 50 times more powerful than heroin, is killing New Jersey residents at a skyrocketing rate, representing a deadly new wrinkle [...]
Pain Pill Addiction Test
Understand your relationship with opiate pain medicines with this simple test Each person’s pathway to opiate addiction is as unique as their pain diagnosis. The following questionnaire is an opportunity for you to better determine [...]
An E.R. Kicks the Habit of Opioids for Pain
By Jan Hoffman June 10, 2016 PATERSON, N.J. — Brenda Pitts sat stiffly in an emergency room cubicle, her face contorted by pain. An old shoulder injury was radiating fresh agony down to her elbow [...]
US Surgeon General, tribal leaders work to combat addiction
By MICHELLE CHARLES Associated Press Sunday, May 29, 2016 STILLWATER, Okla. (AP) - The crisis of addiction hasn’t spared any demographic or any state, including Oklahoma. The Trust for America’s Health ranked Oklahoma fifth-highest for [...]
Dr. Joseph Lee: Focusing on teen opioid use helps limit adult addiction
By Andy Steiner April 22, 2016 It has to start somewhere. It’s true that white, middle-aged male Minnesotans are most likely to die of an opioid overdose, but if we want to truly stem the [...]
Prescription Painkillers May Worsen And Lengthen Chronic Pain
News from a research team studying the effects of opioids may help explain the explosion in prescription painkiller addictions of the last several years. A University of Colorado-Boulder studyhas found that opioid use increases chronic pain in rats. If the [...]
FDA approves first-ever implant for opioid addiction treatment
BY: Dan Mangan, CNBC The first-ever implant used to treat opioid addiction won approval from federal regulators Thursday, providing yet another weapon in the battle against an epidemic of opioid use. The Probuphine device approved by [...]
Parents Often Don’t Get Rid of Leftover Prescription Opioids
MONDAY, May 16, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- When children are prescribed opioid painkillers, such as Oxycontin or Percocet, for surgery or illness, about half of parents say they keep the leftover medicine on hand. "We [...]
OxyContin’s 12-Hour Problem
by HARRIET RYAN, LISA GIRION AND SCOTT GLOVER MAY 5, 2016 The drugmaker Purdue Pharma launched OxyContin two decades ago with a bold marketing claim: One dose relieves pain for 12 hours, more than twice [...]
Painkiller critics take aim at hospital surveys, procedures
By: Tribune news services Contact Reporter Critics of how prescription painkillers are administered in the U.S. are calling on health officials to phase out hospital procedures and questionnaires used to manage pain. They say the current [...]
Telling docs they overprescribe addicting drugs doesn’t make them stop
BY ANDREW M. SEAMAN Reuters Health Government letters informing doctors they're prescribing vastly more addictive drugs than their peers fall on deaf ears, according to a new study. The doctors in the study were all [...]
3 Things Parents of High Schoolers Need to Know About ‘Study Drugs’
By Alexandra Pannoni U.S. News The second half of the school year can be a stressful time for high schoolers with the SAT, ACT, final exams and other important academic events on the agenda. Some teens may [...]
Fatal Overdoses Rising From Sedatives Like Valium, Xanax
By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter THURSDAY, Feb. 18, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- While deaths from overdoses of heroin and narcotic painkillers like Oxycontin have surged in recent years, a new report finds the same thing [...]
Factors Predicting the Transition from Prescription Opioids to Heroin
Prescription opioid misuse remains one of America’s biggest drug problems. In recent years the numbers of people misusing prescription pain relievers has leveled off, however, the number of people dying from overdoses continues to rise, [...]
Misuse Of ADHD Drugs By Young Adults Drives Rise In ER Visits
By Allison Aubrey NPR News It's no secret that stimulant medications such as Adderall that are prescribed to treat symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are sometimes used as "study drugs" aimed at boosting cognitive [...]
Survey Shows Doctors May be Neglecting an Important Question
By Aiden Strawhun Naples Herald A new study finds that roughly half of the people who have taken pain medications in the past year were not asked a vital question that could save their lives, from [...]
The dose makes the poison: Opioid overdose study supports call for caution in Rx levels
When it comes to prescription painkillers, the difference between controlling pain and dying from an overdose may come down to how strong a prescription the doctor wrote, according to a new study in veterans. And [...]
Doctors brainstorm how to halt the prescription painkiller epidemic
By Sandy Ong Scienceline The United States is suffering from an explosive epidemic. Every day, 44 people die from overdosing on prescription opioid painkillers, a rate that has quadrupled since 1999. To help physicians battling [...]
Federal pain panel rife with links to pharma companies
By Matthew Perrone AP Health Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Nearly a third of the members on a government panel that made headlines by calling an effort to curb overprescribing of OxyContin and other painkillers "horrible," [...]
Long-term opioid use linked to depression
By Agata Blaszczak Boxe People who take prescription opioids, which are used for treating pain, for longer than a month may have an increased risk of developing depression, according to a new study. Pain itself [...]
Prescriptions Continue for Most Who Survive Painkiller ODs: Study
By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter Even as overdoses from narcotic prescription painkiller reach record levels in the United States, a new report finds that most people who survive such events continue to be prescribed the [...]
Painkillers Often Gateway to Heroin for U.S. Teens: Survey
By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter Three-quarters of U.S. high school students who use heroin first tried narcotic painkillers, a new survey reveals. Survey results from nearly 68,000 high school seniors provide some clues to heroin's [...]
Popping pills: Examining the use of ‘study drugs’ during finals
By Collin Brennan Christopher Newport University As college students across the country cram for their finals this week, many will turn to the use of “study drugs” to get through the stresses of exams. Prescription [...]
Primary Care Docs the Leading Prescribers of Narcotic Painkillers: Study
MONDAY, Dec. 14, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Americans continue to be plagued by an epidemic of prescription narcotic painkiller abuse, and a new study finds primary care physicians are by far the biggest prescribers of [...]
Abuse of Prescription Painkillers, Stimulants Ups Sexual Risks for Teens
By Tara Haelle HealthDay Reporter MONDAY, Dec. 14, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Teens who use abuse prescription drugs such as narcotic painkillers are more likely to have sex or to participate in risky sexual behaviors, [...]
How to cure America’s pain crisis without risking addiction
By Bob Twillman Foxnews.com The last thing the world needs right now is more suffering. More than 100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain, at an annual cost of $635 billion. That's more than we [...]
America’s painkiller epidemic grips the workplace
By Dina Gusovsky CNBC The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Tom Frieden, recently referred to opioid abuse — including prescription painkillers — as "a growing epidemic that is gripping our country." [...]
CDC urge doctors to curb opioid prescriptions: “The risks are addiction and death, and the benefits are unproven.”
By Lenny Bernstein The Washington Post The government on Monday urged primary-care physicians who prescribe opioids for pain relief to rein in their use of the drugs, proposing new guidelines that call for a more [...]
Still In a Crib, But Being Given Antipsychotics
By Alan Schwarz The New York Times Andrew Rios's seizures began when he was 5 months old and only got worse. At 18 months, when an epilepsy medication resulted in violent behavior, he was prescribed [...]
Narcotic Painkiller Use in Adolescence May Raise Risk of Adult Addiction
By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter WEDNESDAY, Oct. 28, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Teens who are given prescription narcotic painkillers may run a higher risk of abusing narcotics after high school, a new study suggests. Researchers [...]
Why More Painkiller Addicts Are Using Heroin, Too
By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter WEDNESDAY, Oct. 28, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Addicts who have moved from narcotic painkillers to heroin are helping researchers understand this deadly tradeoff. Looking for clues driving concurrent painkiller and [...]
Prescription Naproxen as Good as Narcotic Painkillers for Low Back Pain: Study
By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter TUESDAY, Oct. 20, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Naproxen -- a drug available over-the-counter and by prescription -- appears to provide as much relief for low back pain as a narcotic [...]
Adelson clinic, education helping to beat prescription drug addiction
By Columba Bush Special to the Las Vegas Review-Journal I recently had the privilege of meeting with Dr. Miriam Adelson during a visit to the clinic she founded with her husband in Las Vegas in [...]
National Safety Council Prescription Drug Community Action Kit
To prevent drug overdoses from increasing in your community, the National Safety Council Prescription Drug Community Action Kit offers local organizations guides to: Rid your community of unused prescription drugs Develop programs for saving lives [...]
Wolf Moves To Get Easy Access To Antidote To Heroin Overdoses
A new state law, passed unanimously by the General Assembly, allows police and other first responders to administer a prescription drug called Naloxone or Narcan to anyone who appears to have overdosed. Dr. Neil Capretto, [...]
Tom Wolf: Expand use of medication that can counteract drug overdoses
In too many areas of our state, the disease of addiction has devastating impacts that reverberate across community health, public safety and quality of life in Pennsylvania neighborhoods. Everyday, opioid drug abuse destroys lives and [...]
Is Suboxone® the Best Treatment?
Recently, The Huffington Post published a lengthy article by Jason Cherkis on the various methods to treat patients with opiate dependence. It was an excellent article that featured a number of personal cases from families [...]
Painkiller Abuses and Ignorance
The epidemic of deaths and addiction attributable to opioid painkillers continues unabated even as an authoritative new review of scientific studies has found no solid evidence that opioids are effective in relieving long-term chronic pain. [...]
Using Higher Doses of Narcotic Painkillers Linked With Increased Depression
People who use higher doses of narcotic painkillers to manage pain are at increased risk of depression, a new study suggests. The study included 355 patients who reported low back pain at an initial doctor’s [...]
New Federal Painkiller Rules Make Life Difficult for Veterans
Veterans who take narcotic painkillers are struggling to get monthly appointments at Veterans Affairs (VA) health facilities to renew their prescriptions, as required by new federal rules. The Washington Post reports restrictions adopted by the [...]
Use of Stronger Painkillers on the Rise: Study
The percentage of Americans who take painkillers stronger than morphine is on the rise, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These drugs include oxycodone, hydromorphone, fentanyl and [...]
Report Finds Widespread Overuse of Psychiatric Drugs Among Elderly with Dementia
There is evidence of widespread overuse of antipsychotic drugs by the elderly with dementia, a new government report concludes. The report calls on Medicare to take immediate steps to reduce unnecessary prescriptions, according to The [...]
Two Legislators Call on Company That Makes Naloxone to Lower Price Nationwide
Two legislators are calling on the company that makes opioid overdose antidote naloxone to lower the price of the drug nationwide. Last month, the company, Amphastar Pharmaceuticals, agreed to offer a $6 rebate per dose [...]
Only 53 Percent of Doctors Use Their State Prescription Drug Monitoring Program: Study
Only 53 percent of primary care physicians use their state prescription drug monitoring program, according to a new survey. The national survey found 72 percent of doctors were aware of their state’s program. Researchers from [...]
The Nevada Prescription Drug Monitoring Program
The Nevada Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PMP) is a tracking system that allows prescribers and pharmacists to identify if a patient is receiving controlled substance prescriptions from multiple providers.
How should U.S. regulate powerful painkillers?
46 People die every day from overdosing on prescription painkillers. “In 2012 alone, the CDC says 259 million prescriptions were written for painkillers, enough to supply every American adult with a bottle of pills.” “According [...]
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