Category Archives: Opioids crisis

Baby dies and two others hospitalized in fentanyl overdoses in Washington state

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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.

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Doctors fighting US opioid epidemic say insurance barrier impedes treatment

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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.

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Nan Goldin named art world’s most influential figure

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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.

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US representative files resolution decrying rightwing calls for invasion of Mexico

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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”.

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Pit bull puppy saved by California police after possible fentanyl exposure

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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”.

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Drug agency chief calls on China and Mexico to help stem US fentanyl crisis

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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”.

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Eight is Enough actor Adam Rich died of fentanyl effects, autopsy report says

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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.

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California seizes enough fentanyl in San Francisco to kill city’s population three times over

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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.

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Walgreens reaches $230m settlement with San Francisco over opioids crisis

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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.

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Mexican president bemoans ‘rude’ US fentanyl pressure in plea to Xi Jinping

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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.

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FDA approves overdose-reversing Narcan for sale without prescription

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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.

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Amount of fentanyl seized in US this year ‘enough to kill every American’

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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.

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Walmart announces $3.1bn plan to settle opioids lawsuits

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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.

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Campaigners celebrate as V&A severs Sackler links over opioids cash

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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.

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Artists must expose corruption, urges director of documentary on opioid crisis

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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.

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Distributors didn’t fuel opioid epidemic in West Virginia, judge rules

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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.

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British Museum removes Sackler family name from galleries

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Museum is latest institution to distance itself from family accused of profiting from US opioids crisis

The British Museum has become the latest cultural organisation to remove the Sackler family name from galleries and rooms they have supported.

George Osborne, the museum’s chair, announced the move on Twitter, saying: “We’re moving into a new era, presenting our great collection in different ways for new audiences.”

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Sacklers confronted by opioid crisis victims and families at virtual hearing

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Roughly two dozen gave statements at bankruptcy court hearing attended by Richard, Theresa and David Sackler

A virtual hearing on Thursday in US bankruptcy court gave survivors of opioid dependency and people who lost loved ones to the crisis what they have long desired – an official chance to confront members of the family behind Purdue Pharma, the US creator of the powerful but highly addictive prescription painkiller OxyContin.

They blamed the billionaire Sackler family members for helping spur the epidemic that ultimately has cost about half a million American lives, through aggressive marketing of Purdue’s signature narcotic and for failing to take responsibility for their role.

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OxyContin victims fight for their share in Purdue bankruptcy case

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The Sacklers want protection from future suits. Victims’ families want them to ‘know what their greed has caused’

Stephanie and Troy Lubinski met when they were teenagers, and they were married for three decades. Troy was big-hearted, kind, the best fisherman around, a devoted father who cared for the kids during the day after long night shifts as a firefighter.

But he had back pain that began when he worked in construction and then grew worse over the years. His doctor prescribed OxyContin, and that was the beginning of the end.

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