The best place to look for effective programs are going to be the cities if they administer NARCAN.
By Lenny Bernstein
Life expectancy in the United States declined again in 2017, (click here) the government said in a bleak series of reports that showed a nation still in the grip of escalating drug and suicide crises.
The data continued the longest sustained decline in expected life span at birth in a century, an appalling performance not seen in the US since 1915 to 1918. That four-year period included WWI and a flu pandemic that killed 675,000 people in the United States and perhaps 50 million worldwide....
...Overall, Americans could expect to live 78.6 years at birth in 2017, down a tenth of a year from the 2016 estimate. Men could anticipate a life span of 76.1 years, down a tenth of a year from 2016. Life expectancy for women in 2017 was 81.1 years, unchanged from the previous year....January 11, 2018
By Martha Bebinger
In Massachusetts, (click here) where at least five men and women are dying from an opioid overdose every day, everyone tied to the epidemic is desperate for signs of hope.
They got some late last year, when state data showed an estimated 10 percent decrease in overdose deaths for the first nine months of 2017, compared with the same period in 2016.
But data, and conversations with doctors, suggest the opioid epidemic is getting worse, not better — at least in the state's largest city.
We offer the chart here with caveats: It's from Boston EMS and so doesn't capture all overdoses or deaths in Boston; the cause of death is not confirmed by a medical examiner; and the categories, such as "heroin mentioned," are based on observation by EMTs....
New York State: (click here)
City Drug related deaths in triple numbers
Albany 101
Bronx 461
Dutchess 176
Erie 377
Kings 621
Monroe 289
New York 534
Niagara 107
Onondaga 205
Orange 183
Queens 464
Richmond 248
Suffolk 823 - Long Island
Westchester 285
This was March, what happened to the rest of the year? Heck, this even reached into the Bronx. The raid didn't include prescription drugs. The raids aren't netting the killer, though. Police detectives might be looking in the wrong place to remove opioids off the street. Not that this is insignificant. I am glad for it, but, it isn't hitting the opioids.
March 25, 2018
One of the biggest drug trafficking networks in Suffolk County (click here) was taken down this weekend, police said, announcing the arrest of six people and seizure of large amounts of cash and drugs.
Officers raided four locations and seized $362,000 in cash, 3,250 grams of cocaine, 475 grams of heroin, 400 grams of crack and drug paraphernalia, Suffolk County police said. Four handguns were also seized.
Michael Fearon, 50, of Middle Island, was the ringleader, said District Attorney Timothy Sini. Fearon was arrested after a chase in which he crashed into two unmarked police cars, Sini said. No one was injured.
Fearon and Elius Cefarino Garcia Ovalles, 31, of the Bronx, were charged with operating as major traffickers. They face a slew of other charges, including criminal sale of a controlled substance and weapons charges....
August 23, 2018
East Patchogue, Suffolk County (click here) -- A suspected Suffolk County drug dealer is under arrest after he was linked to a deadly overdose.
Suffolk County police charged 28-year-old Anthony Legette of East Patchogue with selling drugs that contained fentanyl.
Investigators believe the drugs are behind the deadly heroin overdose of a person in Massapequa on Monday night.
He's charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance and criminal sale of a controlled substance....
"The Rules of Opioid Perscribing" (click here)
- Overdose rates from prescription opioids were highest among people aged 25 to 54 years.
- Overdose rates from prescription opioids were higher among non-Hispanic whites and American Indian or Alaskan Natives, compared to non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics.
- The rate of overdose deaths from prescription opioids among men was 6.2 per 100,000 people and the rate among women was 4.3 in 2016.
The highest overdose death rates from prescription opioids were in West Virginia, Maryland, Maine, and Utah....
The prescribing name on the bottle. Why aren't the pharmacists acting on what they know? Pharmacists need to have a region data base at least. Patients can only go so far from home to fill the scripts.
October 12, 2018
Prosecutors (click here) unveiled charges on Thursday against five New York doctors, a pharmacist and associates for allegedly illegally distributing millions of oxycodone pills and fueling the nation's opioid addiction crisis.The prescribing name on the bottle. Why aren't the pharmacists acting on what they know? Pharmacists need to have a region data base at least. Patients can only go so far from home to fill the scripts.
October 12, 2018
The 10 defendants, arrested in raids across the US financial capital, were accused of conducting little or no examination of patients before prescribing the pills in exchange for hefty cash payments.
"They were drug dealers in white coats," said Geoffrey Berman, the US Attorney for Manhattan. "They hid behind their medical licenses to sell addictive, dangerous narcotics," he added.
One doctor with offices in the Bronx and Westchester was accused of issuing oxycodone prescriptions in exchange for thousands of dollars, expensive dinners, high-end whisky, cruises and all-expenses-paid trips.
Another, Dante Cubangbang, 50, and his associates at a clinic in Queens, allegedly prescribed more than six million oxycodone pills knowing that the recipients had no legitimate medical need for them....
The state medical societies need to monitor the scripts for opioids. It is the perscriber and the pharamacies negligence in "good practice." Nationally, the big pharmacies will have records of the drugs they sell. This is why there needs to be federal legislation to monitor the sale of this stuff. I would love to read the POLICIES instituted by pharmacy chains in regard to opioids. I bet they are a money maker.
Fentanyl is usually maintained in hospital supplies, HOWEVER, there are patches given to people with chronic pain as a prescription. However, patients will complain fentanyl patches are not as effective as the opioids. Which is odd because resistence to opioids occurs quicker than fentanyl patches.
I don't know, I never tried it, if the fentanyl patches can be manipulated to extract the fentanyl. Otherwise, the dealers are mixing this stuff up in their kitchens somewhere. What I don't understand is why we don't see more dead drug dealers that are using fentanyl laced opioids or heroine. The stuff is strong and only a very small amount is effective.
It is used in hospital for conscious sedation, so it is strong enough to put someone in a twilight sleep for a procedure. The patients are always monitored while under the drug, that is why the illegal stuff on the market doesn't make sense in a lot of ways. It is more the fentanyl than the opioids that are causing the deaths. I THINK. From the stand point of potency.
Autopsies should be performed on overdose victims for the purpose of determining drug and level of drug to achieve death.
September 26, 2018The state medical societies need to monitor the scripts for opioids. It is the perscriber and the pharamacies negligence in "good practice." Nationally, the big pharmacies will have records of the drugs they sell. This is why there needs to be federal legislation to monitor the sale of this stuff. I would love to read the POLICIES instituted by pharmacy chains in regard to opioids. I bet they are a money maker.
Fentanyl is usually maintained in hospital supplies, HOWEVER, there are patches given to people with chronic pain as a prescription. However, patients will complain fentanyl patches are not as effective as the opioids. Which is odd because resistence to opioids occurs quicker than fentanyl patches.
I don't know, I never tried it, if the fentanyl patches can be manipulated to extract the fentanyl. Otherwise, the dealers are mixing this stuff up in their kitchens somewhere. What I don't understand is why we don't see more dead drug dealers that are using fentanyl laced opioids or heroine. The stuff is strong and only a very small amount is effective.
It is used in hospital for conscious sedation, so it is strong enough to put someone in a twilight sleep for a procedure. The patients are always monitored while under the drug, that is why the illegal stuff on the market doesn't make sense in a lot of ways. It is more the fentanyl than the opioids that are causing the deaths. I THINK. From the stand point of potency.
Autopsies should be performed on overdose victims for the purpose of determining drug and level of drug to achieve death.
Katherine Hoover (click here) gave more than 335,000 opioid painkiller prescriptions under her name from December 2002 to January 2010 — meaning the West Virginia doctor wrote about 130 prescriptions per day, assuming she worked seven days a week.
But in a new story by Corky Siemaszko at NBC News, Hoover argued she did nothing wrong. “I prescribed narcotics to people in pain. I did everything I could to help people have a better life, which I told the FBI,” Hoover said. “Every prescription I wrote was justified for the person who had gotten it.”
That contradicts court records and what others closely involved with Hoover’s clinic told NBC News. According to them, the clinic was basically a for-profit pill mill — charging $450 in cash for first-time appointments, and the doctors often didn’t even see the patients to whom they were giving prescriptions.
Unlike some of the doctors and clinics that have been prosecuted during the opioid epidemic, Hoover wasn’t charged and convicted for the excess prescriptions. When the police raided her clinic in 2010 due to its excessive opioid prescribing, she went to the Bahamas (where she owns an island and reportedly hopes to start a nudist resort)....
There is a side of this we are missing. It has to be the perscribers and the pharmacies, otherwise, why aren't drug raids in a high death rate district in Long Island not finding opioids, other than heroine? Why aren't they finding the fentanyl, too?
