Simple Answer: Amid controversy, sometimes the basic facts of drug addiction get lost. The nation is watching Tennessee for new legislation that would allow women to be criminally charged if they use drugs during pregnancy that harm their newborns. State and national groups have asked Gov. Bill Haslam to veto the bill before Tuesday, saying criminalization isn't the right approach to stem the state's growing numbers of babies born dependent on drugs. This complicated epidemic raises many questions, yielding few simple answers. Here are a few: [continues 596 words]
Painkiller Abusers Find a Cheap Option to Help Them Cope, Often With Lethal Consequences Just 10 years ago, heroin made up a small fraction of the drug-related arrests in Norwich. These days, Detective Lt. Mark Rankowitz and fellow officers can recite any number of stories about the drug's ever-increasing impact. There is the star high school athlete with national aspirations who injured her knee and became addicted to prescription painkillers before turning to the cheaper and more widely available alternative - heroin. [continues 1981 words]
Expansion of Medi-Cal Helps Addicts Afford to Quit Heroin accounts for 17 percent of Sacramentans seeking treatment at county clinics. Kurt Wagner was 12-years clean when his life began to unravel. He lost his job, his wife left and the money ran out. Homeless and alone, the uninsured Wagner had to pay $300 a month for methadone treatment. When he could no longer afford it, it was only a matter of time before he fell off the wagon. "I couldn't keep up with the payments, so they feetoxed me," said the 58-year-old Wagner. He explains while seated outside CRC Health Group in south Sacramento this past Thursday that "feetox" refers to the process methadone clinics undertake for patients who run out of money. They wean them off treatment over two to three weeks to minimize the inevitable shock of withdrawal. [continues 672 words]
The Petersburg Police Department may petition the federal government to become designated as a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA). A coalition of law enforcement agencies can petition to become a HIDTA region, however, according to the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), no agencies in Southeast have applied. In a report to the assembly several months ago, Borough Manager Steve Giesbrecht announced that Petersburg was being considered for the HIDTA designation. Police Chief Kelly Swihart said that in November the FBI informed him that they were considering working towards designating Southeast as a HIDTA. Should the Feds go forward with a designation process Petersburg hopes to participate, Swihart said. [continues 726 words]
Even With Jackson County Overdoses Declining From 2012, Last Year's Tally Ranked County Fifth In Oregon Eleven people died of drug overdoses in Jackson County in 2013, down from 19 the previous year, but still enough to put the county in the top five statewide for drug-related deaths, a report from the state medical examiner shows. The number of drug deaths was the second highest in the county since 2002, the report said. The agency's findings, released Thursday, show seven deaths were heroin-related, five deaths were linked to methamphetamine and two deaths involved a combination of substances. The number of heroin deaths was the fourth highest in the state. [continues 242 words]
Clean, Safe And Addressing A Growing Need Clean needles keep everyone safe. The Huron County Health Unit is still working with community partners to implement a new needle exchange program. The program has been in place in the county since November, when it was passed at the Board of Health. While there are a couple locations for intravenous drug users to get and return clean needles currently in the county, the need for increased accessible service is still very prevalent. Prior to the implementation of a local program, Huron County users were traveling to Middlesex and Perth counties for needles and supplies. While it is not an exact number, Public Health Nurse at the HCHU, Shelley Spence, said county residents used between 5,000- 10,000 needles a month - mostly obtained at exchange clinics in London. [continues 414 words]
Clean Needles Keep Everyone Safe. The Huron County Health Unit is still working with community partners to implement a new needle exchange program. The program has been in place in the county since November, when it was passed at the Board of Health. While there are a couple locations for intravenous drug users to get and return clean needles currently in the county, the need for increased accessible service is still very prevalent. Prior to the implementation of a local program, Huron County users were traveling to Middlesex and Perth counties for needles and supplies. While it is not an exact number, Public Health Nurse at the HCHU, Shelley Spence, said county residents used between 5,000-10,000 needles a month - mostly obtained at exchange clinics in London. [continues 415 words]
After Madison Walker quit heroin, he urged Connor Brennan to get clean, too. Brennan, 20, thought about Walker, who had grown up in the same Fairfax County subdivision and was sober, healthy, close with his parents again. Look how happy he is, Brennan thought. I want to be like that. A few nights later, Brennan was in a detox program in Chantilly. And Walker, 27, was dead. He'd taken one last hit, in a bathroom of his family's home in Springfield, and collapsed with the needle still in his arm. [continues 2309 words]
Premier Commits To Building Addictions Facility If Recommended By Mental Health And Addictions Officer "People are dying - there's no treatment here for people that are suffering with mental illness and addiction," a mother told a crowd of supporters during a protest at Province House Tuesday. Dianne Young organized the protest in an attempt to push lawmakers in P. E. I. into doing more to provide services for Islanders struggling with addictions. Young's son, Lennon Waterman, is believed to have taken his own life in November as a result of an addiction to prescription drugs. [continues 577 words]
Doctor Opens Storefront For Legal Marijuana London has become the unlikely home of Canada's first storefront one-stop pot shop. Options Clinics Canada at 790 Dundas St. will assess patients and dispense authorizations for them to buy medical marijuana online from about 12 federally licensed commercial producers. When it's delivered, patients will be able to pick up the pot at the counter of the secure facility. "I am fairly certain this is the first of its kind in Canada. I have talked to a couple of (marijuana) producers and they weren't aware of anything like this," said Dr. John Craven, owner/ operator of the clinic. [continues 380 words]
A London doctor opens a storefront for legal weed on Dundas St. London has become the unlikely home of Canada's first storefront one-stop pot shop. Options Clinics Canada at 790 Dundas St. will assess patients and dispense authorizations for them to buy medical marijuana online from about 12 federally licensed commercial producers. When it's delivered, patients will be able to pick up the pot at the counter of the secure facility. "I am fairly certain this is the first of its kind in Canada. I have talked to a couple of (marijuana) producers and they weren't aware of anything like this," said Dr. John Craven, owner/operator of the clinic. [continues 380 words]
Now that the federal government has finally, belatedly given the OK to a long-delayed study looking at marijuana as a treatment for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, the same government needs to take another step and remove the legal hypocrisy that prevents such research in the first place. The problem hindering medical cannabis is the fact that since the passage of the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, marijuana has been classified as a Schedule 1 drug, the statute's most restrictive category, along with LSD, peyote and ecstasy, meaning that it is highly addictive, and has no medical value. Both statements are false. But the classification remains, thanks to the DEA, despite petitions from governors, state attorneys general, members of Congress, researchers and others over the decades requesting the change. [continues 300 words]
As Changing State Laws Cut Pot Prices, Cartels Turn to Opium Poppies TEPACA DE BADIRAGUATO, MEXICO - The surge of cheap heroin spreading in $4 hits across rural America can be traced back to the remote valleys of the northern Sierra Madre. With the wholesale price of marijuana falling - driven in part by decriminalization in sections of the United States - Mexican drug farmers are turning away from cannabis and filling their fields with opium poppies. Mexican heroin is flooding north as U.S. authorities trying to contain an epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse have tightened controls on synthetic opiates such as hydrocodone and OxyContin. As the pills become more costly and difficult to obtain, Mexican trafficking organizations have found new markets for heroin in places such as Winchester, Va., and Brattleboro, Vt., where, until recently, needle use for narcotics was rare or unknown. [continues 1418 words]
DURHAM -- Long before the overdose death of actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman thrust heroin back into the headlines this winter, the return of the potent narcotic was already known to police and public health officials in North Carolina. Heroin, which emerged in popular culture in the 1940s as an exotic product associated with jazz musicians and later became known as the dead-end drug of junkies in movies and songs, had never gone away. A few dozen people died of heroin overdoses in North Carolina each year since 2000, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services. [continues 1371 words]
A group of chronic drug addicts is asking a Vancouver judge for an injunction against the federal government that would allow them continued access to prescription heroin until the court hears their legal challenge. Joseph Arvay, the lawyer representing five addicts, told a judge the four men and one woman were part of a clinical trial that provided them with pharmaceutical-grade heroin until last year. When they left the study, with the recommendation of their doctors, they applied for - - and were granted - special access permits from Health Canada to receive the prescription drug, diacetylmorphine. [continues 292 words]
Heroin has made a comeback, and it is destroying lives in the Cape Fear region. It's cheap, plentiful, addictive - and deadly. What is most discouraging is that the experts admit demand for the opiate will ensure a steady supply, even as police take down major dealers and traffickers. Arresting key players disrupts the market for a while, but soon other suppliers will take their place. StarNews reporters Mike Voorheis and Adam Wagner dug beneath the surface for a grim look into Wilmington's heroin problem and the people who can't function without it. It was a stark look at just how easy it is to get heroin, and how tough it is to kick the habit. [continues 462 words]
Sacked Government Adviser Claims the Official Figures Present a Misleading Picture on the Number of Deaths The number of deaths from so-called legal highs is being overestimated with many of the fatalities due to substances either wrongly classified or already outlawed in the UK, a former government drugs advisor has claimed. Official figures, including those from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), are giving a potentially misleading impression of the scale of the problem fuelling a media and political overreaction, according to Professor David Nutt. [continues 478 words]
BENNINGTON, Vt. - Stephanie Predel, a stick-thin 23-year-old freshly out of jail, said she was off heroin. But she knows precisely where she could get more drugs if she ever wanted them - at the support meetings for addicts. "I can get most of my drugs right at the meeting," she said. "Drug dealers go because they know they're going to get business." She added, "People are going into the bathroom to get high." Bennington, a pre-Revolutionary town of 17,000 people, presents another face of the heroin epidemic that has swept through Vermont. [continues 793 words]
Citing a dramatic increase in heroin-related deaths, Delaware County officials announced Thursday they are pushing for legislation to allow police officers to carry a drug that can reverse the effects of a heroin overdose. They said they also are exploring the possibility of a pilot program with the Pennsylvania Department of Health that would equip police, often the first to arrive at the scene, with naloxone nasal spray, more commonly known as Narcan. They said 52 heroin-related deaths were reported in the county in each of the last two years, with 12 so far in 2014. By contrast, 19 deaths were reported in 2007. [continues 328 words]
From the beginning, the U.S. government's decade-long crackdown on abuse of prescription drugs has run an unsettling risk: that arresting doctors and shuttering "pill mills" would inadvertently fuel a new epidemic of heroin use. State and federal officials have pressed their campaign against prescription-drug abuse with urgency, trying to contain a scourge that kills more than 16,000 people each year. The crackdown has helped reduce the illegal use of some medications and raised awareness of their dangers. [continues 1549 words]
