[graphic] This motion graphic shows how OxyContin flowed out of Los Angeles. A Washington city devastated by black-market OxyContin filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against the painkiller's manufacturer Thursday, alleging that the company turned a blind eye to criminal trafficking of its pills to "reap large and obscene profits" and demanding it foot the bill for widespread opioid addiction in the community. The suit by Everett, a city of 100,000 north of Seattle, was prompted by a Times investigation last year. The newspaper revealed that drugmaker Purdue Pharma had extensive evidence pointing to illegal trafficking across the nation but in many cases did not share it with law enforcement or cut off the flow of pills. [continues 1302 words]
The Haldimand- Norfolk Health Unit wasn't exaggerating last year when it warned about the threat of illegal street drugs cut with powerful synthetic opioids. Norfolk paramedics responded to 37 drug overdoses in all of 2014. This rose to 59 in 2015. In 2016, the total was 90. "These are only the number of calls that were specifically dispatched as drug overdoses and do not account for other primary problems associated with overdose that the crews were sent to such as vital- signs- absent, unconscious-unresponsiveness, seizures, respiratory problems or behavioural-psychiatric occurrences," Sarah Townsend, Norfolk's manager of emergency medical services, said Jan. 6 in an update on opioid occurrences. [continues 366 words]
[photo] (Debee Tlumacki for The Boston Globe) Paul Jehle, pastor of the New Testament Church of Cedarville, shook hands with recovering addict Justin Todd at a Project Outreach drop-in center hosted by the church in Plymouth. One in a series of occasional articles about opiate abuse and its consequences. It took multiple applications of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, Paul Hachey of Plymouth recalled, to revive him in late September. The 38-year-old was "dead" from an OxyContin overdose for three minutes before he slipped back to life, he said. [continues 1192 words]
Addiction isn't an illness like any other. Patients need not just the right medicines but therapy, support and, in some cases, tough supervision The grim faces of the nation's opioid epidemic -- an overdosing parent slumped in the front seat of a car, mouth agape, with a neglected child in the rear seat -- have become too familiar in recent years. More babies are now being born with narcotics in their systems, foster care is strained, and growing numbers of grandparents are raising the children of their own addicted children. [continues 1111 words]
The reformulation of the powerful painkiller OxyContin in 2010 is the chief driver of the explosion in heroin overdose deaths in subsequent years, according to a new working paper from researchers at the RAND Corp. and the Wharton School. OxyContin, released by Purdue Pharma in 1996, is a powerful extended-release opioid designed to provide 12-hour relief to patients suffering from severe pain. The original formulation was particularly prone to abuse, as drug users found that they could crush the pills and chew, snort or inject them in order to deliver 12 hours of powerful painkiller dosage all at once. [continues 869 words]
Sometimes half measures are the best we can hope for One of the problems with being politically conservative in the most basic sense of the word - genetically suspicious of change - is that you can wind up looking lost and silly and backward when mainstream opinion on any given topic slingshots past you, as it often does in Canada. It only took about five years for opposition to same-sex marriage to go from a mainstream Liberal position to fodder for Liberal attack ads. About 15 minutes after the assisted dying law took effect, the news was full of people complaining children and people living in remote rural areas might be denied access. [continues 682 words]
A new chain of Montreal-area medicinal marijuana clinics hasn't yet opened, but its methods are already being challenged by Quebec's college of physicians. And while the man behind these clinics says he's complying with the rules outlined by Health Canada's medicinal cannabis program, he also admits that some of the doctors he works with are based out of province and will prescribe the drug via Skype teleconference. This practice is illegal, according to the College des medecins du Quebec. [continues 636 words]
Marijuana and its derivatives can be effective medicines for treating pain, nausea, vomiting, muscle spasms and other conditions, but cannabis is not harmless, and more research is needed, the nation's top scientists concluded in a landmark review of research released Thursday. The nonprofit National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine issued their report, "The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids," summarizing the current state of evidence for the efficacy of medical marijuana and recommending new studies. The 395-page report will stand as the most official medical review of the botanical drug, which an estimated 8 percent of Americans used in the last month. [continues 1174 words]
One of the most important and pressing challenges of 2017 will be Canada's response to opioid addiction. The sheer scale of overdoses from heroin and other opioids has already led British Columbia to declare a public health emergency, and the crisis is sweeping east. Fentanyl has washed over the West Coast like a deadly tsunami. The synthetic opioid can be up to 100 times more potent than morphine. It's not just hardened addicts who are dying. Overdose deaths have spiked among occasional drug users, with fentanyl detected in street drugs ranging from heroin to marijuana. [continues 521 words]
Op-ed: Physician anesthesiologists can help fight opioid abuse. The opioid dilemma puts pressure on every physician to pause and reflect. Physician anesthesiologists are dedicated to providing pain relief in the safest manner possible, which includes prescribing and managing opioid therapy when medical conditions warrant. What we face now is too many tragic instances of patients emerging from pain treatment regimens only to see their lives destroyed later through addiction. Opioids include illegal heroin and prescription "pain killers" such as oxycodone, and the impact of these drugs is clear in Maryland and elsewhere. The numbers of opioid-related deaths statewide increased 23 percent between 2014 and 2015, and have more than doubled since 2010, according to the latest Maryland health department report released this fall. [continues 676 words]
[photo] Photo by Don Sapatkin / Staff Dr. Thomas C. Barone, a family physician, practiced in Center City until the State Board of Osteopathic Medicine suspended his license after four current and former patients died of opioid overdoses. Photo taken following his testimony at a reinstatement hearing in Harrisburg on Sept. 16, 2016. Don Sapatkin covers a wide-ranging public health beat and doubles as deputy health and science editor. He joined the Inquirerin 1987. The Pennsylvania Board of Osteopathic Medicine refused Wednesday to let Thomas C. Barone, a pain management physician whose prescribing practices were linked to the deaths of four patients, return to his Center City practice. [continues 452 words]
Mary Louise received her first dose of CBD oil Saturday, about four months after the bill allowing children to receive the oil extracted from marijuana was signed into law. The oil helps children like Mary Louise with severe epilepsy control their seizures. It took only a simple phrase to see how Mary Louise Swing's life would improve from cannabidiol. On vacation with family in Myrtle Beach last weekend, Mary Louise stunned her mother, Jill, and a roomful of relatives with a simple "Hi everybody" as she got out of bed. [continues 685 words]
The Ontario government has agreed to help fund three supervised drug-injection sites in Toronto and one in Ottawa as part of an effort to better prepare Canada's most populous province for the eastward spread of illicit fentanyl. Ontario said it is creating a framework to smooth the way for other communities to open supervised-consumption services of their own, while the federal Liberals have promised to knock down legislative barriers erected by Stephen Harper's government, which opposed letting users inject their drugs legally as health-care workers watched. [continues 900 words]
State-run Chinese media have expressed skepticism that the country is a key source of fentanyl, despite an agreement with the RCMP that was seen as a tacit admission of China's role in fuelling the unfolding overdose crisis in Canada. A Globe and Mail investigation last year revealed how fentanyl is manufactured in China and how easily it is shipped to Canada, and border officials here have intercepted dozens of such shipments. Last November, the RCMP announced an agreement with the Chinese Ministry of Public Security to stem illicit fentanyl exports, citing recent seizures of fentanyl and carfentanil, an even stronger opioid, that originated in China. [continues 471 words]
No city in the country would want to be in Vancouver's shoes right now. The municipality is in the midst of an illicit-drug-overdose epidemic that killed 128 people in November alone - an average of more than four deaths a day. Indeed, in the first 11 months of last year, the overdose crisis was responsible for 755 deaths, up 70 per cent from the same period in 2015, with some addicts actually overdosing multiple times a day. The main culprit for the upswing? Fentanyl. That drug alone, which is 100 times more toxic than morphine, was responsible for 374 overdose deaths between January and October, up 194 per cent over the previous year. [continues 544 words]
In Milwaukee County, a record 299 people died from drug overdoses in 2016, outstripping the 255 total deaths in 2015, which was itself a record. That preliminary total does not include an estimated 45 suspected drug-related deaths that are awaiting toxicology results. [photo] Alyssa Anderson, 24, died in March 2015 of a heroin overdose. She was one of 281 people who died from heroin statewide in 2015 and the death toll continued to climb in 2016.(Photo: Family photo) Annette Renk remembers her daughter playing the violin and bass guitar, exploring nature and caring for her pets -- a cat, a snake and a tarantula. [continues 1237 words]
[photo] Bruce Brandler is chief federal law enforcement officer for a sprawling judicial district that covers half of Pennsylvania. (Matt Rourke / Associated Press) The phone at Bruce Brandler's home rang at 3:37 a.m. It was the local hospital. His 16-year-old son was there, and he was in really bad shape. A suspected heroin overdose, the nurse said. Brandler didn't believe it. Erik had his problems, but heroin? It seemed impossible. Nearly 10 years later, the nation is gripped by a spiraling crisis of opioid and heroin abuse -- and Brandler, a veteran federal prosecutor recently promoted to interim U.S. attorney, suddenly finds himself in a position to do something about the scourge that claimed his youngest son's life. [continues 778 words]
Narcotic painkillers - which can cause birth defects - commonly were prescribed for women of reproductive age, according to new data presented Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The research, which looked at the years 2008-2012, found that 39% of women ages 15 to 44 on Medicaid and 28% of those on private insurance received an opioid prescription. "Many women of reproductive age are taking these medicines and may not know they are pregnant and therefore may be unknowingly exposing their unborn child," CDC Director Tom Frieden said in a statement. [continues 710 words]
