The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/drugs/)
It would mark the third consecutive year of proposed reductions, which the Justice Department says would help reduce the amount of drugs potentially diverted for trafficking and used to facilitate addiction.
The epidemic appears more deadly than ever. The death toll is more than the peak yearly death totals from H.I.V., car crashes or guns. It’s unclear whether the epidemic has reached its peak. Some factors contributing to the rising overdose rate have proved difficult to contain.
A new report by the American Bar Association’s Senior Lawyers Division makes nine recommendations and suggests 45 “action items” that it says can advance public health efforts to confront the opioid epidemic. One recommendation calls for promoting policies and laws that support families and caregivers struggling with opioid and substance misuse disorders.
San Diego doctors who were told of their patients’ deaths were 7 percent less likely to start new patients on opioids and issued fewer high-dose prescriptions over the next three months.
The number of U.S. women who gave birth addicted to opioids has quadrupled in the last 15 years, increasing the number of infants who face a long, painful withdrawal at birth, according to new government data. There is vast regional variation.
An ongoing argument about the differences between ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ marijuana is absorbing Michigan courts and politicians. But the debate turns more on politics than science, and is likely to become irrelevant if voters approve full legalization next November, writes a commentator on drug policy.
Correction officials have long been skeptical of the efficacy and high cost of administering such medications to inmates. But their use is increasing in many states, including Rhode Island, Vermont, Massachusetts, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey and Washington, and in such cities as New York, Albuquerque and Los Angeles.
A House committee investigating the opioid crisis is asking three drug makers to answer questions and provide documents about their practices, including when they learned prescription opioids could be addictive and how they marketed the drugs.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a 20-person work group to draft legislation allowing for recreational use by adults. A state health department study concluded that the positive effects of a regulated marijuana market would outweigh the potential negatives.
The needs of pain sufferers have been “sacrificed” to aggressive policies aimed at curbing the nation’s opioid epidemic, write two medical researchers in a forthcoming study in the Addiction journal. They argue the policies are based on a misreading of experts’ recommendations.