New Cato Report: A Border Wall Won ’t Stop Drug Smuggling—Marijuana Legalization Has
President Trump has repeatedly cited drug smuggling as a reason to build a wall along the Southern border. Butmy new Cato policy analysis shows that, if stopping drug smuggling is the goal, a border wall is about the worst possible investment. Here are a few of the main findings:Hundreds of miles of border fences built from 2003 to 2009 had no effect on marijuana smuggling.Marijuana legalization starting in 2014 has cut marijuana smuggling between ports of entry (i.e. where a wall would go) 78 percent from 114 pounds per agent in 2013 to just 25 pounds per agent in 2018. Since marijuana is the primary drug smuggled betwe...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 19, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: David Bier Source Type: blogs
Johnson and Johnson's Latest Ethical Misadventures: Settled Kickback Allegations, Reportedly Concealed Knowledge of Adverse Effects of a " Sacred Cow " Product
Giant pharmaceutical/ biotechnology/ device company Johnson& Johnson has its famous" credo " which starts withWe believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services. In meeting their needs everything we do must be of high quality..Nonetheless, the company has a long history of ethical misadventures (lookhere, and see appendix below). Now late in 2018, we note two more Johnson& Johnson misadventures. In chronological order,$360 Million Settlement of Allegations of Kickbacks to Medicare/ Medicaid Patients to...
Source: Health Care Renewal - December 15, 2018 Category: Health Management Tags: adulterated drugs adverse effects deception impunity Johnson and Johnson kickbacks legal settlements Source Type: blogs
Today ’s Drug Abusers Did Not Derive From Yesterday’s Patients
We learned last week that the 2017 drug overdose numbers reported by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention clearly show most opioid-related deaths are due to illicit fentanyl and heroin, while deaths due to prescription opioids have stabilized, continuing a steady trend for the past several years. I’ve encouraged using the term “Fentanyl Crisis” rather than “Opioid Crisis” to describe the situation, because it more accurately points to its cause—nonmedical users accessing drugs in the dangerous black market fueled by drug prohibition—hoping this wi ll redirect attention and lead to reforms...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 4, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
The Atomizer and Naloxone: Life-Saving Treatment for Opioid ODs
The atomizer is a handy tool to instill life-saving medication into the nose, and you should consider stocking them if you don't already. An atomizer can be used to administer naloxone and countless other drugs as well as for moderate sedation and pain control. Pediatric and adult patients alike can benefit from intranasal fentanyl or Versed. Studies on intranasal epinephrine for anaphylaxis also look promising, but it does require a higher dose—5 mg instead of 0.3 mg. (Asian Pac J Allergy Immunol 2016;34[1]:38; http://bit.ly/2Prpjhb.)The atomizer is easy to use and can be attached to any syringe. Each spray c...
Source: The Procedural Pause - December 4, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs
U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Doubles Down on Misguided Prescription Opioid Policy
Conventional wisdom argues that the opioid epidemic has resulted from excessive opioid prescribing, but the evidence shows just the opposite. Restrictions on opioid prescribing have pushed opioid users into the black market, where they overdose on illicit fentanyl, not prescription opioids (mainly because they cannot assess potency). Reason’s Jacob Sullum has a nice recentpiece on this point.Yet policymakers keep doubling down on the conventional wisdom. The U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, Andrew Lelling, has just anouncednew scrutiny of doctors who prescribe opioids:US Attorney Andrew E. Lelling has sent letter...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 30, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey Miron Source Type: blogs
No Let Up On The Bad News About Overdose Deaths
The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) just issued Data Brief Number 329, entitled “Drug Overdose Deaths in the United States, 1999-2017.” Drug overdose deaths reached a new record high, exceeding 70,000 deaths in 2017, a 9.6 percent increase over 2016. That figure includes all drug overdoses, including those due to cocaine, methamphetamines, and benzodiazepines. The actual breakdown according to drug category will be reported in mid-December. However, estimates are opioid-related deaths will account for roughly 49,000 of the total overdose deaths. The big takeaways, quoting the report:- The rate of ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 29, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
Has Opioid Hysteria Risen to the Point Where Innovation Is Forbidden?
On November 2 the Food and Drug Administration announced the approval of Dsuvia, a sublingual tablet containing the powerful fentanyl analog, sufentanil. Sufentanil has been used for years in the hospital setting, primarily in intravenous form for anesthesia. It is roughly 5 to 10 times more potent than fentanyl, and thus has a significant overdose potential. The FDA reached this decision following a 10-3 vote in favor of the drug’s approval by the Anesthetic and Analgesia Drug Products Advisory Committee (AADPAC),based on data from multicenter trials. It was not approved for outpatient use, but for use only in ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 6, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
As If We Needed It, More Evidence Emerges Showing That The Government Has Changed The Opioid Crisis Into a Fentanyl Crisis
Speaking last week at a National Opioid Summit in Washington, DC, Attorney General Jeff Sessions reported opioid prescriptions fell another 12 percent during the first eight months of 2018, saying ‘We now have the lowest opioid prescription rates in 18 years.” Some of this was no doubt the result of the chilling effect that prescription surveillance boards have had on the prescribing patterns of physicians. For example, Sessions announced th e Trump administration has charged 226 doctors and 221 medical personnel with “opioid-related crimes,” and this has not gone unnoticed by health care practitioners.Sessions ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 1, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
Fentanyl is a killer drug in 50% of opioid overdoses.
Fentanyl is 10 times more powerful than heroin. Gets mixed into street heroin and kills users by unintentional overdoses. (Source: Markham's Behavioral Health)
Source: Markham's Behavioral Health - October 25, 2018 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: David G. Markham Source Type: blogs
Markets Can Calm Opioid Epidemic If Government Gets out of the Way
Yesterday,WBUR in Boston reported on a simple technology that could reduce the number of opioid deaths: fentanyl test strips. The strips can be used by drug users to test for the presence of fentanyl in drugs they buy on the street. A Brown University study found that,Sixty-two percent of young adult drug users who participated in the study in Rhode Island dipped the thin, pliable strips into the cooker where they heated the powder, or into their urine sometime after injecting. Half reported a positive result — a single dark pink line emerging on the strip — signaling fentanyl.Most changed their routine as a result in ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - October 19, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey Miron Source Type: blogs
Does addiction last a lifetime?
I am now 11 years into recovery from my battle with opiate addiction, and I have always been fascinated with two related questions: is there truly such a thing as an “addictive personality,” and do people substitute addictions?
The myth of the addictive personality
The recently deceased writer and television personality Anthony Bourdain was criticized by some for recreationally using alcohol and cannabis, in what was seemingly a very controlled and responsible manner, decades after he quit heroin and cocaine. Was this a valid criticism? Can a person who was addicted to drugs or alcohol in their teens safely have a glas...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - October 8, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Peter Grinspoon, MD Tags: Addiction Alcohol Medical Research Source Type: blogs
Dia de los Muertos
A 27-year-old man presented by EMS was agitated, confused, and combative. EMS said they had received a call for a patient who was minimally responsive lying on the sidewalk. They noted the patient with pinpoint pupils and decreased respirations. The concern was that he had been using heroin, so he was given 2 mg intranasal naloxone. This caused the patient to become acutely confused and combative. He was awake and alert but oriented x 0. His vital signs included a temperature of 99.1°F, a heart rate of 122 bpm, a respiratory rate of 26 bpm, and pulse oximetry of 97% on room air.At least 160 people were admitted to Phil...
Source: The Tox Cave - September 29, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs
Mandated Queries of the Florida Prescription Drug Monitoring Program: Early Experiences from a Cancer Center-based Outpatient Palliative Medicine Clinic
This article describes our e xperiences in the first month of experience with the new law, although we plan to examine queries for a total of three months before closing this QI project.For the purpose of this QI project, we have documented patients ’ demographics, including each patient’s age, gender and limited identifying information, such as patient names and identification numbers; this data will be de-identified for any statistical analysis planned in the future. We also recorded patients’ main diagnosis and pain symptoms, the numbe r of prescribers listed by the PDMP as well as the dose of the patient’s opio...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - September 14, 2018 Category: Palliative Care Tags: kollas opioids pdmp quality improvement The profession Source Type: blogs
Addiction Abuse
Hardly a day goes by without a report in the press about some new addiction. There are warnings about addiction to coffee. Popular psychology publications talk of “extreme sports addiction. ” Some news reports even alert us to the perils of chocolate addiction. One gets the impression that life is awash in threats of addiction. People tend to equate the word “addiction” with “abuse.” Ironically, “addiction” is a subject of abuse.The American Society of Addiction Medicine defines addiction as a “chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry…characterized by the inabilit...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 13, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
The Law of Unintended Consequences Strikes Again
Late last week UPI news ran a report by E.J. Mundell with the headline, “Government efforts to curb opioid prescriptions might have backfired.” It cites two separate studies published online in JAMA Surgery on August 22 that examined two different restrictive opioid policies that fell victim to the Law of Unintended Consequences.The first study, by researchers at the University of Michigan, evaluated the impact of the Drug Enforcement Administration ’s 2014 rescheduling of hydrocodone (Vicodin) from Schedule III to Schedule II. Prescriptions for Schedule III narcotics may be phoned or faxed in by providers, but ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 26, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
