There's An Antidote for Heroin Overdose, and a Former Addict Is Among Those Working to Spread It Far and Wide Joshua Livernois woke up hazy, sick and splashed with Dr. Pepper in a hospital bed in Salinas, California. He couldn't piece together the events of the previous day or so, and he's still not even sure which year it was, probably 2005 or '06. He'd been using heroin off and on for about 10 years and almost daily for five. [continues 2388 words]
Ravens' Monroe Advocates for Removing Cannabis Ban Baltimore - Eugene Monroe made up his mind, his conviction steeled by obsessive research. He would advocate publicly for medical marijuana use in the NFL. He knew he would create consternation inside a powerful, conservative institution. He understood it might jeopardize his career as a Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman. And the first skeptic he faced was his wife, Nureya. When Monroe first shared his self-appointed mission in December, Nureya was confused. She had understood marijuana as illegal and dangerous since childhood, and ever since they met at the University of Virginia, she had known her husband as a health-shake-chugging, gluten-free, dairy-free, pescatarian athlete who didn't use marijuana. [continues 1954 words]
Richmond police Capt. Michael Zohab is building an army for the war on drugs. But his fight, as supervisor of the city's narcotics unit, is not against the people using them. Instead, the 28- year police veteran is laying the groundwork for the department to join a growing number of law enforcement agencies across the country whose precincts have become unlikely sanctuaries for those who want help getting off drugs. Rather than putting substance abusers in handcuffs, Zohab wants to give them a hand up in the fight of their lives. And he needs all the help he can get. [continues 1193 words]
Over the years, people have been taught that marijuana was an evil drug. This drug is so evil that approximately 750,000 people are arrested every year and some of them convicted and fined for its use in the United States. So evil that every 42 seconds someone gets arrested for it. America is so convinced of marijuana's evils, that we are willing to root out this drug wherever it is used, bought, and sold, right? Wrong. in our nation's capital, before legalization, 91 percent of arrested marijuana dealers were African-American. What about the other 9 percent? Well, before Washington voters legalized its use, only 4 percent of Washington, D.C.'s arrested marijuana dealers were Caucasian. [continues 546 words]
Time is critical as respiration depresses from a potentially lethal dose of heroin, or possibly a cocktail including other opioids. For those first on scene, they need access naloxone to quickly get the victim breathing again. Monday, Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London, which has seen a growing number of overdose patients, announced they will provide some municipal police departments with this drug for a year. "Hospital leadership believed it was extremely important to get Narcan into the hands of first responders now," said Ron Kersey, the hospital's long-time EMS coordinator, in a statement. "There isn't the time for budget requests and grant submissions. They need the [naloxone] now because people are dying. The first day this Narcan was available to the Waterford Police Department, they saved a life." [continues 134 words]
The death of Prince, who apparently had a Percocet problem, and a 2016 presidential primary peppered with New England town halls that delved into increased heroin overdoses and prescription drug abuse have converged to create what CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta calls "a public health epidemic." Drug addiction is 2016's big nonpolitical story. CNN aired a special, "Prescription Addiction: Dead in the USA." The Senate passed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act to provide grants for treatment and improved monitoring. The House also is working on legislation , with funding expected later in the year. [continues 771 words]
Authorities Are Filing More Drug-Induced Homicide Charges, but Complex Cases Show It's Hard to Decide Whether Offenders Deserve Prison or Treatment When police and paramedics arrived at her aunt's apartment in Carol Stream, Adrianna Diana told them she and her friend Christopher Houdek had cooked and shot up heroin the night before. Diana, 20, said she awoke covered in vomit, with Houdek, 21, next to her, unresponsive and "cool to the touch." Her aunt called 911. Paramedics rushed Houdek to a hospital, where he died. The DuPage County coroner ruled his 2013 death an accident by "heroin intoxication." But prosecutors decided it was homicide- and charged Diana and two heroin dealers. [continues 1911 words]
One local woman is working to get an involuntary drug rehabilitation law passed in Alabama. The law, which JoAnn Hendrix is calling Jamie's Law, would provide a means for families to petition the court to order their loved one with a drug problem to be placed in an involuntary drug rehabilitation treatment program. In a paper outlining the objective of Jamie's Law that Hendrix sent to the Governor's office, she describes it as a law that would provide a means of intervening with someone who is unable to recognize their need for treatment due to substance-abuse impairment of their mind. This would be similar to Casey's Law, also known as the Matthew Casey Wethington Act for Substance Abuse Intervention, in Kentucky. [continues 410 words]
Heroin's Fast Rise Propels States to Charge Family, 911 Callers With Murder "I think a person who supplies illegal drugs to a person that kills them is . . . no different than a person who shoots somebody with a gun." David Hickton, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania When Jarret McCasland and his fiancee decided to celebrate her 19th birthday with heroin, it meant the end of her life and the end of his freedom. Flavia Cardenas, who worked in a nightclub, died of an overdose the next morning in Baton Rouge. After a prosecutor convinced a jury that McCasland administered the fatal dose, the 27-year-old pipe fabrication shop worker was found guilty of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison in February with no chance for parole. [continues 2064 words]
Pot ticket option, fewer cops lead to lowest narcotic bust numbers in three decades, but special unit arrests up ' considerably' The war on drugs may not be over in Chicago, but it's in retreat. In 2015, total drug-related arrests dropped to the lowest level in three decades, a Chicago Sun- Times analysis of city crime data found. And the rate of drug busts plunged more sharply in the first four months of 2016. Chicago Police are on pace to make 13,000 narcotics arrests by year's end. That would be the smallest annual tally since 1973, two years after President Richard Nixon declared a national war on drugs. [continues 967 words]
More than half the people who died last year from opioid overdoses had the powerful drug fentanyl in their blood, according to data released Monday by the state Department of Public Health. The department's quarterly report on overdoses included information about fentanyl for the first time, confirming reports from law enforcement that the synthetic opioid - more powerful than morphine or heroin - may be playing a major role in the overdose epidemic. Dealers are believed to be lacing heroin with fentanyl, making it even more deadly. [continues 531 words]
The headlines have become grimly familiar: "More than 20 overdose deaths hit Middlesex in 3 weeks," "Opioid overdoses kill 10 people in 12 days in Sacramento area," "Opioid abuse has death grip on Tennessee." But there's a problem with this umbrella term "opioids." It hides the fact that Americans are actually dying from two separate scourges: some are succumbing to heroin, others to prescriptions drugs like OxyContin, Percocet, and Vicodin. Reacting to these very different epidemics with a set of policies focused on "opioids" may ultimately prove inadequate, even counterproductive. Because heroin and prescription opioids are killing different people, in different ways, across different parts of the country. [continues 1257 words]
Dr. Leana Wen, a practicing emergency care physician and Baltimore's health commissioner, has seen what addiction does to patients. Speaking to reporters this month in Baltimore, Wen recalled a patient, who developed an addiction and would lie about illnesses to ensure she had access to treatment, but then died of a heroin overdose after multiple attempts to get appropriate treatment. "Our overall goal: We have to get people into treatment at the time that the need it," Wen said. But the rate of fatal opioid overdoses has skyrocketed in the United States. Opioid-involved deaths more than tripled from 2000 to 2014, including an age-adjusted death rate increase of 210 percent from the same time span, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2014 alone, 28,000 people died of fatal opioid overdoses, according to the CDC. [continues 1583 words]
President Obama's administration has missed opportunities to stem the opioid overdose crisis, and therefore it's no great surprise that heroin overdose deaths have tripled since 2010. The administration dragged its feet on requiring mental health and addiction treatment to have the same insurance coverage as physical ailments; inexplicably, it took five years to write the federal regulations needed to implement the 2008MentalHealth Parity and Addiction Equity Act. Many insurance plans still ignore the need for parity, studies show. The administration is only this month finalizing rules to implement parity for mental health and addiction treatment in Medicaid... [continues 471 words]
Toll Tied to 40% Spike in Heroin Overdoses Michael Carter felt a brief flash of relief before searing grief consumed him. His son's life had ended, but so, too, had the nights spent wondering when police would show up at his Hanover County home to tell him Graham had fatally overdosed. A year later, Carter is left with the pain, and a question: How many more sons and daughters will die as state and federal officials pledge progress on stemming the tide of epidemic heroin and prescription pill abuse? [continues 1736 words]
Sacramento's Deadly Fentanyl Outbreak Underscores Antidote's Access Barriers Presh doesn't remember what it's like to come back from the dead. But her mom sure does. It was about three or four years ago. Jolene (not her real name) got a call from a local emergency room informing her that her daughter was being treated for a near-fatal heroin overdose after paramedics found her unresponsive in the back seat of a parked car. "I didn't even know she was using heroin," said Jolene. "When they found her, she was blue and barely breathing." [continues 1551 words]
A new Mainstreet/Postmedia poll says 44 per cent of Edmontonians surveyed support the establishment of a safe injection site for IV drug users in this city. Another 30 per cent opposed the idea, while 26 per cent were undecided. That's not overwhelming public support. But it suggests an intriguing degree of public receptiveness. And this is the right time for us to be having that discussion. Historically, heroin hasn't been a problem drug in Edmonton. But that's changing. In 2013, there were 19 visits to emergency rooms in the Edmonton health zone because of heroin overdoses. Last year, there were 118. In the first two months of 2016, there were about as many heroin overdoses as there were in all of 2013. [continues 625 words]
Safety Push Local officials are showing interest in making Seattle the first U.S. city to offer a medically supervised site for drug use, which advocates say could reduce overdose deaths, disease transmission and discarded needles on the ground. Seattle could become the first city in the U.S. with a public site where users can inject and smoke hard drugs under medical supervision. One local group plans to open a bare-bones safe-consumption site on a shoestring budget as soon as possible, while another group has launched an awareness campaign to build support among politicians and communities. [continues 1238 words]
Advocates Say Addicts Need Long-Term Care Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and the Democratic-controlled legislature are weighing options for tackling the fast-growing heroin epidemic that has taken root across the state and throughout the country. Many of the solutions focus on loosening criminal penalties for drug offenses and shifting more money - including the potential prison savings - to treatment and rehabilitation programs. The efforts have drawn praise from experts, including Joshua Sharfstein, the physician who served as state health director under Hogan's predecessor, Martin O'Malley (D). But they are viewed with skepticism by some advocates, who want the state to immediately and significantly expand long-term residential treatment. [continues 1270 words]
ST. LOUIS - Clara Walker, a mother of nine and grandmother of eight, was peering out the window of her home three years ago after hearing what she initially thought were gunshots from a television crime show. But at that moment, Anthony Jordan, who the authorities say was a gang enforcer known as "Godfather," was spraying gunfire on the street outside, and two bullets struck Ms. Walker, killing her. "St. Louis is a dangerous place right now," Johnny Barnes, Ms. Walker's longtime boyfriend, said during a recent interview. "It's all around us." [continues 1222 words]
