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1 of 1- Goose
- Cogito ergo sum
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Drug Deaths in America Are Rising Faster Than Ever
Drug Deaths in America Are Rising Faster Than Ever
AKRON, Ohio — Drug overdose deaths in 2016 most likely exceeded 59,000, the largest annual jump ever recorded in the United States, according to preliminary data compiled by The New York Times.The death count is the latest consequence of an escalating public health crisis: opioid addiction, now made more deadly by an influx of illicitly manufactured fentanyl and similar drugs.
Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death among Americans under 50.
Although the data is preliminary, the Times’s best estimate is that deaths rose 19 percent over the 52,404 recorded in 2015. And all evidence suggests the problem has continued to worsen in 2017.
Because drug deaths take a long time to certify, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will not be able to calculate final numbers until December. The Times compiled estimates for 2016 from hundreds of state health departments and county coroners and medical examiners. Together they represent data from states and counties that accounted for 76 percent of overdose deaths in 2015. They are a first look at the extent of the drug overdose epidemic last year, a detailed accounting of a modern plague.
The initial data points to large increases in drug overdose deaths in states along the East Coast, particularly Maryland, Florida, Pennsylvania and Maine. In Ohio, which filed a lawsuit last week accusing five drug companies of abetting the opioid epidemic, we estimate overdose deaths increased by more than 25 percent in 2016.“
Heroin is the devil’s drug, man. It is,” Cliff Parker said, sitting on a bench in Grace Park in Akron. Mr. Parker, 24, graduated from high school not too far from here, in nearby Copley, where he was a multisport athlete. In his senior year, he was a varsity wrestler and earned a scholarship to the University of Akron. Like his friends and teammates, he started using prescription painkillers at parties. It was fun, he said. By the time it stopped being fun, it was too late. Pills soon turned to heroin, and his life began slipping away from him.
Mr. Parker’s story is familiar in the Akron area. From a distance, it would be easy to paint Akron — “Rubber Capital of the World” — as a stereotypical example of Rust Belt decay. But that’s far from a complete picture. While manufacturing jobs have declined and the recovery from the 2008 recession has been slow, unemployment in Summit County, where Akron sits, is roughly in line with the United States as a whole. The Goodyear factories have been retooled into technology centers for research and polymer science. The city has begun to rebuild. But deaths from drug overdose here have skyrocketed.
In 2016, Summit County had 312 drug deaths, according to Gary Guenther, the county medical examiner’s chief investigator — a 46 percent increase from 2015 and more than triple the 99 cases that went through the medical examiner’s office just two years before. There were so many last year, Mr. Guenther said, that on three separate occasions the county had to request refrigerated trailers to store the bodies because they’d run out of space in the morgue.In some Ohio counties, deaths from heroin have virtually disappeared. Instead, the culprit is fentanyl or one of its many analogues. In Montgomery County, home to Dayton, of the 100 drug overdose deaths recorded in January and February, only three people tested positive for heroin; 99 tested positive for fentanyl or an analogues.
Fentanyl isn’t new. But over the past three years, it has been popping up in drug seizures across the country.
Most of the time, it’s sold on the street as heroin, or drug traffickers use it to make cheap counterfeit prescription opioids. Fentanyls are showing up in cocaine as well, contributing to an increase in cocaine-related overdoses.The most deadly of the fentanyl analogues is carfentanil, an elephant tranquilizer 5,000 times stronger than heroin. An amount smaller than a few grains of salt can be a lethal dose.
Last edited by Goose (6/07/2017 7:55 am)
We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists.
- Tarnation
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Re: Drug Deaths in America Are Rising Faster Than Ever
In York County Narcan saves are up 50% from same period last year, unfortunately OD deaths are up by the same percentage.
Life is an Orthros.
- Goose
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Re: Drug Deaths in America Are Rising Faster Than Ever
A tragic, and preventable epidemic, caused in some ways with the best of intentions.
We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists.
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Thread Starter- Tarnation
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Re: Drug Deaths in America Are Rising Faster Than Ever
Reduction of pain is a noble goal, but ever since the discovery of morphine it has come with serious side effects and potentially lethal consequences.
What compounds the opiod OD tragedy is that many of the users are persons with chronic pain, often originating from injuries sustained on the job or in accidents. Not really their "fault".
Life is an Orthros.
- Goose
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Re: Drug Deaths in America Are Rising Faster Than Ever
True.
"Morphinism" first became rampant in the US in the aftermath of the Civil War, when hundreds of thousands of grievously wounded soldiers used it to manage their chronic pain.
The consequences were dire.
Fast forward to the 1980's and 90's. Hospitals and physicians came under intense criticism for under-treating pain. Cancer and chronic pain patients were sometimes denied large doses of narcotics due to fears of addiction.
People, with the best of intentions worked to "fix" this. The Centers Medical and Medicaid Services (AKA the Feds) and the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations developed a policy calling pain "The Fifth Vital Sign".
These government and quasi government organizations then put enormous pressure on hospitals and physicians to aggressively treat pain. Your job, or the accreditation of your facility began to hinge upon whether you scored high in treating pain.
Unsurprisingly, prescriptions for narcotic pain relievers went through the roof. The drug companies were more than happy to market ever more powerful drugs. Drugs that one generation of doctors would only give for advanced cancers were now being given to patients going home after hernia surgery.
Pain clinics sprang up all over the US and became "Pill mills".
Drug cabinets in homes all over the country contained lots of leftover narcotics ripe for the experimentation by children. People didn't appreciate just how addictive these chemicals are.
After getting a taste for prescription opioids, people moved on to cheap heroin,,, and drug runners even set up their own blackmarket labs to produce fentanyl.
And now, an epidemic.
The road to hell really is paved with good intentions.
Two years ago the state of Massachusetts really cracked down on physicians ability to prescribe narcotics in the state. Smart. Although the horse is out of the barn.
And physicians of a certain age are shaking their heads at the government making it harder to get narcotics. After all, it was the government who once worked to push doctors to give more narcotics.
Last edited by Goose (6/09/2017 5:29 am)
We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists.
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Thread Starter- Just Fred
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Re: Drug Deaths in America Are Rising Faster Than Ever
My daughter would verify much of what has been said on this topic. She's an RN at Brandywine Hospital and works on the floor that deals with cases involving this stuff. She has told me many times that many of her patients began as people who got hooked on prescribed 'pain killers'.
- Goose
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Re: Drug Deaths in America Are Rising Faster Than Ever
Interesting:
FDA wants opioid painkiller pulled off market
(CNN)The US Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that drugmaker Endo Pharmaceuticals must remove its powerful opioid painkiller Opana ER from the market. The agency says this the first time it has asked that an opioid pain medication be pulled due to "the public health consequences of abuse."
"We are facing an opioid epidemic -- a public health crisis -- and we must take all necessary steps to reduce the scope of opioid misuse and abuse," FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said. "We will continue to take regulatory steps when we see situations where an opioid product's risks outweigh its benefits, not only for its intended patient population but also in regard to its potential for misuse and abuse."
If Opana ER sounds familiar, it's because it was the drug of choice for many addicts at the center of an HIV outbreak in Indiana in 2015.
The drug is about twice as powerful as OxyContin, another often abused opioid. Opana ER, oxymorphone hydrochloride, is used to manage pain severe enough to require daily, around-the-clock, long-term opioid treatment for which alternatives aren't strong enough, according to the manufacturer's website. The FDA approved it for this use in 2006.
"My comment is 'wow,' " said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, co-director of opioid policy research at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. "This is pretty exciting. This is big news."
Though it is a "good sign" for the fight against opioid abuse, he said, "Opana is not the only one that needs to come off the market."
We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists.
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Thread Starter