A new year brings new laws in New York, including stronger treatment options for opioid addiction and increasing the state's minimum wage. New York's minimum wage increases Dec. 31, 2016. ALBANY -- A new year brings new laws in New York, including stronger treatment options for opioid addiction and increasing the state's minimum wage. Many of the state's new laws each year are pegged to the start of the calendar year, and in the case of the higher minimum wage, it starts Saturday, Dec. 31. [continues 286 words]
Several dozen people who lost loved ones to heroin and opiate addiction gathered at Canalside Saturday to mourn and to raise awareness. (Maki Becker/Buffalo News) Kelly Taylor couldn't talk publicly about the fact that two of her sons died of heroin overdoses. It wasn't just grief. She knew people judged her. Self-doubt silenced her. But Taylor and others who have endured the agony of losing loved ones to the opiate epidemic say there is no longer room for shame and silence. [continues 714 words]
On Nov. 8, 2016 voters in California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada approved ballot measures to legalize recreational cannabis. It is now legal in a total of eight states. And this creates potential problems for road safety. How do we determine who's impaired and who's not? The effects of alcohol vary based on a person's size and weight, metabolism rate, related food intake and the type and amount of beverage consumed. Even so, alcohol consumption produces fairly straightforward results: The more you drink, the worse you drive. Factors like body size and drinking experience can shift the correlation slightly, but the relationship is still pretty linear, enough to be able to confidently develop a blood alcohol content scale for legally determining drunk driving. Not so with marijuana. [continues 833 words]
NEW YORK - Health officials say the synthetic opioid fentanyl has surpassed heroin as the leading cause of overdose deaths on Long Island. The New York Times reports that fentanyl killed at least 220 people on Long Island in 2016. Fentanyl can be 100 times as potent as heroin and is much cheaper because it can be made in a lab. The numbers from Long Island are part of a national pattern. Fentanyl fatalities have surpassed those from heroin in other parts of the country including New England. The medical examiners of Long Island's two counties, Nassau and Suffolk, compiled the overdose statistics there. Suffolk County Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Caplan said the influx of illegally manufactured fentanyl from overseas requires "a multidisciplinary intervention from all levels of government." [end]
There is a place in city of Rochester where people from all walks of life have been gathering. About half of them come from the city, the other half drive in from the suburbs, or even farther, to get here every day. It is a hub of diversity, unlike any other in the Finger Lakes region. Men and women, young and old, business executives, soccer moms, students. They drive shiny BMWs, family minivans, and pickup trucks with antlers mounted on the hood. [continues 505 words]
The state Department of Health has proposed amending its regulations to allow hospitals to develop procedures under which patients could take medical marijuana and other medications brought from home. While not specifically outlawed now by department regulations, the amendment would give explicit permission for hospitals to formulate their own rules about patient use of medical marijuana, Jill Montag, a Health Department spokeswoman, said in an email. Hospitals that want to permit self-administration of medical marijuana or other medications "must develop and follow policies and procedures to ensure the safe self-administration and security of the medication," according to the Health Department's proposed amendment to the state's Medical Marijuana Program. [continues 501 words]
Arrests for possessing small amounts of marijuana exceeded those for all violent crimes last year, a new study has found, even as social attitudes toward the drug have changed and a number of cities and states have legalized its use or decriminalized small quantities. And a disproportionate number of those arrested are African-Americans, who smoke marijuana at rates similar to whites but are arrested and prosecuted far more often for having small amounts for personal use, according to the study. The arrests can overwhelm court systems. [continues 831 words]
They are not like other mourners. They are raw. "Hysterical crying," said Jackie Berger, a florist. Some arrive at the other extreme, showing quiet resignation, even relief. "They knew this day was coming," said Frank Lettera, a funeral director. They are the parents and relatives of young men and women who died on Staten Island after overdosing on heroin. The grieving families are passing through the rituals of death in numbers never seen before: a record 72 suspected overdoses so far this year. That number far surpasses the previous record of 41, in 2014. [continues 805 words]
The man entered the Red Robin restaurant inside the Staten Island Mall two minutes after 6 p.m. on a Friday. He walked straight past the booths and tables and entered the men's room. A manager would find him there seven minutes later, lying on the floor with a needle and foaming at the mouth. His name was Jonathan Ayers, 27, and he was declared dead within the hour that evening, Sept. 9, apparently of a heroin overdose. Mr. Ayers's fatal overdose was the latest addition to a body count without precedent. So far in 2016, there have been 71 deaths that appear to be from heroin overdoses on the island, the Richmond County district attorney's office said, already on pace to more than double the record set two years ago. Nine people died of heroin overdoses in a recent 10-day period, prosecutors said. [continues 1789 words]
To the Editor: Re "Safer Alternatives to Opioids" (editorial, Aug. 30): As an anesthesiologist and president of the American Society for Enhanced Recovery, I applaud the surgeon general's campaign addressing the overprescribing and misuse of opioids. While I agree that minimizing opioid use will take a concerted effort by all those involved in the health care system, hospitals, in particular, have a critical role. Although often overlooked in the opioid discussion, hospitals have become an inadvertent gateway to opioid use in America. A recent survey found that one in 10 patients became addicted or dependent on opioids following a surgical procedure, and 91 percent of surgeons felt pressure to prescribe more opioids than a patient needed, in part because of the need to score well on patient satisfaction evaluations. [continues 86 words]
To the Editor: As a physician who specializes in pain management, I agree that we are overusing opioids and underusing other treatments. Certainly, the lack of insurance coverage for many of these other treatments is a significant problem. There is an even more important factor, however, that hinders patient access to them. Most physicians receive little education on pain management in medical school and in postgraduate training. It is unrealistic to expect physicians to recommend treatments about which they possess little knowledge. If the surgeon general really wants to have an impact on how we treat pain in this country, he needs to address this. Philadelphia [end]
About half of opioid overdose deaths involve prescription drugs. With that stark fact in mind, the surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, sent an unusually direct plea last week to 2.3 million doctors and other health care workers to help fight the opioid epidemic by treating pain "safely and effectively." A website for his "Turn the Tide" campaign highlights alternative, nonaddictive treatments for pain. Not only doctors but also policy makers, insurance companies and other players in the health care system should pay attention. [continues 334 words]
ALBANY - Moving to address complaints about New York's new medical marijuana program, the state's Health Department is making substantial changes to expand access to the drug, including allowing home delivery, quite likely by the end of September. The program, which saw its first dispensaries open in January, has struggled to gain broad traction in the medical community and with potential patients. Advocates for the medical use of marijuana have said the program, allowed by a 2014 law signed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, was too restrictive, and its regulations too cumbersome to fulfill its mandate. [continues 972 words]
On a Sunday morning in late July, in a small town in southwest Alabama, Barbara Moore Knight gave her fellow church members news that brought spontaneous applause and murmurs of "Amen!" She told them that her son, James LaRon Knight, was among the drug felons whose sentences had been commuted by President Barack Obama the week before. In 2004, Knight was convicted of conspiracy to sell cocaine. Although the crime was nonviolent, he was sentenced to more than 24 years in a federal prison. The sentence was a travesty, an unduly harsh punishment for a family man never accused of running a substantial criminal enterprise. [continues 507 words]
Washington - As a college student in Virginia, Corey Jacobs started selling drugs with the help of a group of friends to make some extra money. A Bronx native, Mr. Jacobs was no kingpin, and no aspect of their drug conspiracy involved violence. Now age 46, Mr. Jacobs has served 16 years of a sentence of life without parole in the federal system. No question, Corey Jacobs should have gone to prison for his felony. But does he deserve to die there? [continues 1176 words]
Supporters of a saner marijuana policy scored a small victory this week when the Obama administration said it would authorize more institutions to grow marijuana for medical research. But the government passed up an opportunity to make a more significant change. The Drug Enforcement Administration on Thursday turned down two petitions - one from the governors of Rhode Island and Washington and the other from a resident of New Mexico - requesting that marijuana be removed from Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act. Drugs on that list, which include heroin and LSD, are deemed to have no medical use; possession is illegal under federal law, and researchers have to jump through many hoops to obtain permission to study them and obtain samples to study. Having marijuana on that list is deeply misguided since many scientists and President Obama have said that it is no more dangerous than alcohol. [continues 485 words]
Naloxone saves lives after a heroin overdose, but does it also encourage addiction? To the Editor: In an effort to be balanced, the article notes that critics' opposition to naloxone is based on the premise that it gives drug users a safety net, allowing them to take more risks and seek higher highs, resulting in multiple overdoses. These claims are refuted by studies in New York, San Francisco and here in Connecticut of overdose risks, undertaken before widespread availability of naloxone, in which a strong predictor of an overdose was a previous nonfatal overdose. To date, no evidence has been presented that naloxone availability or use in response to overdoses increases risk-taking or overdose frequency. Instead, there is plenty of evidence that it saves lives and provides those individuals an opportunity to seek treatment. The critics' disparaging of the lifesaving benefits of naloxone is just another example of the stigmatization of those with the chronic disorder of opioid abuse that brands such individuals as unworthy of efforts to reduce their mortality. New Haven The writer is a professor at the Yale University School of Public Health. [end]
Naloxone saves lives after a heroin overdose, but does it also encourage addiction? To the Editor: The same arguments about encouraging more risk taking were made earlier about needle exchange programs to fight H.I.V., delaying their implementation by years. But when New York State stopped heeding the naysayers and did expand access to clean needles, H.I.V. infection rates in drug users, which had stood at 54 percent in 1990, fell to only 3 percent by 2012. Now state health officials call the formerly contentious practice "the one intervention which could be described as the gold standard of H.I.V. prevention." Let's not make the same mistake by spreading similarly baseless fears about naloxone. New York The writer is the author of "Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction." [end]
President Obama last week commuted the prison terms of 214 federal inmates who were sent to prison under draconian, '80s-era laws that have since been revised. Among them were 67 people serving life sentences, nearly all of them for nonviolent drug offenses. Mercy was granted in these cases. But the federal clemency system - which moves far too slowly and is too often blocked by politics in both the Justice Department and the White House - was never intended to manage miscarriages of justice that happen on a vast scale, as was the case when so many Americans were sent to prison under the "tough on crime" policies of the 1980s. [continues 378 words]
Naloxone saves lives after a heroin overdose, but does it also encourage addiction? To the Editor: You say naloxone "carries no health risk; it cannot be abused and, if given mistakenly to someone who has not overdosed on opioids, does no harm." In fact, like most drugs, naloxone can have adverse effects, most of which are mild, but some, such as severe hypertension, decreased platelet function, coma and death, are very significant. Severe hypertension and tachycardia can likely be exacerbated in patients who have taken amphetamines or cocaine in addition to opioids, causing heart attack or stroke. Fortunately, most overdoses treated with naloxone occur in young patients who tolerate side effects. However, I am concerned about propagating the myth that this drug is completely safe and thereby inadvertently adding a new game to the highs of addiction - get high, push the experience to near death, make sure naloxone is handy for reversal, and repeat. We may indeed see more complications if patients are using multiple rounds of opioids and naloxone. Milford, Conn. The writer is an anesthesiologist. [end]
Inside New York
