USC study finds cannabis can help manage withdrawal symptoms, as well as cravings and anxiety after withdrawal
New research from the University of Southern California shows that cannabis might help some people stop or cut down on their opioid use.
“We interviewed 30 people who were using opioids and cannabis and injecting drugs,” said Sid Ganesh, a PhD student at USC’s medical school and lead author of the study.
Continue reading...Committee rejects student denaming proposal despite role of Sackler-owned Purdue Pharma in US opioid epidemic
Harvard University has decided that it will not remove the name of the Sackler family from two of its buildings, despite years of protests from families of opioid overdose victims and anti-opioid groups.
In its recent denaming proposal update, a Harvard review committee rebuffed a 23-page proposal filed in October 2022 by Harvard College Overdose Prevention and Education Students to dename the Arthur M Sackler Museum, part of the Harvard Art Museums, and the Arthur M Sackler Building, a campus building.
Continue reading...Sobering figure obscures the fact that the number of overdose deaths in the US declined for the first time since 2018
An estimated 107,543 people died of drug overdoses in the US in 2023, a shocking figure that obscures a glimmer of hope – this is the first annual decline in drug overdose deaths since 2018.
The grim toll represents Americans’ struggle with powerful synthetic drugs, in particular the synthetic opioid fentanyl, known to be up to 100 times stronger than morphine. More than 1 million people have died of a drug overdose since 2001, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Continue reading...Police sound alarm after 13-month-old dies in Everett near Seattle and two other babies taken to hospital in past week
Officials in Washington are sounding alarms after a baby died, and two others apparently also overdosed, in the past week in separate instances in which fentanyl was left unsecured inside residences.
A 911 caller on Wednesday afternoon reported that a 13-month-old baby was not breathing in an apartment in Everett, a city near Seattle, the Daily Herald reported. The baby died later at a hospital, according to authorities. The Snohomish county medical examiner’s office will determine the baby’s official cause and manner of death, officials said.
Continue reading...Prior authorization requires permission to be sought before prescribing critical drugs, which could cost lives, doctors say
In the midst of the worst overdose epidemic in US history, addiction medicine specialists say a bureaucratic hurdle is adding to the difficulty of getting people in treatment: an insurance industry tactic called “prior authorization”.
Loathed by doctors of all stripes, prior authorization requires healthcare providers to seek permission from insurance companies before they prescribe a treatment. Doctors in addiction medicine said the requirement is both unnecessarily burdensome and could cost lives.
Continue reading...Photographer and campaigner against Sackler family tops ArtReview Power 100 list
Nan Goldin, the pioneering photographer and campaigner against the billionaires who fuelled the US opioid epidemic, has topped an annual ranking of the contemporary art world’s most influential people and organisations.
Goldin, 70, took the number one spot on the ArtReview Power 100 list. This year, for the first time, the top 10 is made up entirely of artists who use their work and platforms to intervene in the pressing social and political issues of the current moment.
Continue reading...Joaquin Castro urged fellow House members to reject Republican calls for US military action to stem flow of fentanyl from Mexico
A progressive US congressman from Texas has asked his legislative colleagues to join him in condemning some American conservatives’ calls to invade Mexico – ostensibly to do battle with drug cartels there.
Joaquin Castro says he intends to file a resolution in the US House as soon as Friday reaffirming the federal government’s “commitment to respecting the sovereignty of Mexico and condemning calls for military action without Mexico’s consent and congressional authorization”.
Continue reading...The pup’s owners were arrested in a Walmart parking lot on suspicion of animal cruelty and possession of narcotics
California police administered an overdose-reversing drug to a pit bull puppy in attempts to save it from a potential fentanyl overdose.
On Friday, the Irvine police department announced that it administered a dose of Narcan to the puppy after it was exposed to fentanyl in a car and began to “show signs of an overdose”.
Continue reading...The majority of the extremely powerful illegal opioid entering the US is manufactured in Mexico using Chinese precursors
Drug Enforcement Administration administrator Anne Milgram has called for further cooperation from China and Mexico in the fight against the US’s fentanyl crisis.
In an interview with Chuck Todd, the host of NBC’s Meet the Press, on Sunday, Milgram said that despite the DEA standing “ready to work with anyone who will work with us”, the US has “not had the cooperation that we want to have” from China, adding that the Mexican government also “needs to do more”.
Continue reading...Child actor known as ‘America’s little brother’ for his role on the hit family show died in Los Angeles home on 7 January at age 54
The effects of fentanyl are considered the cause of death for Adam Rich, the child actor known as “America’s little brother” for his role on the hit family dramedy Eight is Enough.
The former television star’s death this January has been ruled an accident by the Los Angeles county medical-examiner coroner’s office, according to an autopsy report.
Continue reading...Governor’s office says over 4kg of drug seized in city since May – enough to cause deadly overdoses of more than 2m people
California law enforcement officials have seized enough fentanyl, in San Francisco alone, to cause the deadly overdoses of more than 2 million people since the beginning of May. The amount, over four kilos, was enough to kill the entire city’s population three times over, the governor’s office announced on Thursday.
The seizures were made by California highway patrol (CHP) officers and are a part of Gavin Newsom’s plan to address the spread of fentanyl, blight and public safety in the city where 268 people died from accidental overdoses in the first four months of 2023, according to a report from the city’s medical examiner. All of the fentanyl was found in and around San Francisco’s historic and long-embattled Tenderloin neighborhood.
Continue reading...Company averts a trial to determine damages as drug-related deaths surged by 41% in the city in the first quarter of this year
San Francisco has reached a $230m settlement with Walgreens over the corporation’s role in the city’s unprecedented opioid crisis.
The settlement is the largest ever awarded to a local government amid years of continuing, nationwide opioid-centered litigation, according to San Francisco’s city attorney.
Continue reading...Andrés Manuel López Obrador asks China to curb exports of opioid after lengthy denunciation of similar calls from US
Mexico’s president has written to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, urging him to help control shipments of fentanyl, while also complaining of “rude” US pressure to curb the drug trade.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has previously said that fentanyl is the US’s problem and is caused by “a lack of hugs” in US families. On Tuesday he read out the letter to Xi dated 22 March in which he defended efforts to curb supply of the deadly drug, while rounding on US critics.
Continue reading...Move seen as a key strategy to control the US overdose crisis, which has been linked to more than 100,000 deaths a year
The US Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved selling naloxone without a prescription, setting the overdose-reversing drug on course to become the first opioid treatment drug to be sold over counters in the US.
It is a move some advocates have long sought as a way to improve access to a life-saving drug, though the exact impact will not be clear immediately.
Continue reading...DEA says more than 379m deadly doses of opioid with strength from one and a half to 50 times stronger than heroin were seized
The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has said it seized enough fentanyl in 2022 to kill every person in America.
In a statement on Tuesday, the DEA said it had seized 50.6m fentanyl-laced fake prescription pills and more than 10,000lb of fentanyl powder this year – seizures that in total represent more than 379m deadly doses.
Continue reading...Retail giant is latest major chain to settle lawsuits with state and local governments across the US over toll of opioids sold at its pharmacies
Retail giant Walmart on Tuesday become the latest major player in the drug industry to announce a plan to settle lawsuits filed by state and local governments over the toll of powerful prescription opioids sold at its pharmacies with state and local governments across the US.
The $3.1bn proposal follows similar announcements on 2 November from the two largest US pharmacy chains, CVS Health and Walgreen Co, which each said they would pay about $5bn.
Continue reading...London museum bows to years of pressure and removes signs acknowledging the family behind the OxyContin crisis
Campaigners calling for the name Sackler to be dropped from cultural landmarks are celebrating this weekend. Their smiles mark five years of demonstrations and dramatic stunts as another major arts institution – London’s Victoria and Albert Museum – takes down signs acknowledging the financial contribution from this wealthy family.
The museum is dropping it controversial ties with the Sackler family, descendants of US makers of addictive opioid prescription drugs. It’s a victory for the campaign group Sackler P.A.I.N, which staged a dramatic public protest at the gallery in November 2019. The group, led by American artist Nan Goldin, argued that donations from the family that founded now-bankrupt Purdue Pharma, maker of the painkiller OxyContin, were a moral stain on cultural institutions that accepted them.
Continue reading...The story of Nan Goldin, a photographer who campaigned against the Sackler family’s Purdue Pharma, premieres at the Venice Film Festival
A documentary about artist Nan Goldin’s fight to hold members of the Sackler family to account for the opioid crisis is “a challenge to other artists” to use their power to expose corruption, its director Laura Poitras has said.
The maker of lauded films including Risk (about Wikileaks) and Citizenfour (about Edward Snowden) was premiering All the Beauty and the Bloodshed in competition at the Venice film festival on Saturday.
Continue reading...Doctors’ ‘good faith’ prescribing decisions drove volume of painkillers shipped to pharmacies, says district judge David Faber
The US’s three largest pharmaceutical distributors were not responsible for fueling an opioid epidemic in a part of West Virginia, a federal judge ruled on Monday.
District judge David Faber rejected efforts by the city of Huntington and Cabell County to force McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health to pay $2.5bn to address a drug crisis prompted by a flood of addictive pills in their region.
Continue reading...2021 was a record year for overdose deaths with an estimated 107,622, CDC says, an increase of 15% from the previous year
Trevor Foster, 26, loved the Cowboys, the Yankees, fishing, animals and above all his daughter.
Jarod Galloway, 21, wanted people to be the best version of themselves, and his niece was his favorite human.
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