Newsroom
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washingtonpost.com: A town of 3,200 was flooded with nearly 21 million pain pills as addiction crisis worsened, lawmakers say
Posted 2/5/2018
Over the past decade, nearly 21 million prescription painkillers have been shipped to a tiny town in West Virginia, a state where more people have overdosed on opioids and died than in any other in the nation.
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drugstorenews.com - Turning the tide: Retail pharmacy grapples with the opioid epidemic
Posted 2/5/2018
The opioid crisis is one staggering statistic after another. Opioid-related deaths — including those due to prescription opioids, heroin and fentanyl — have more than quadrupled since 1999, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention logging 42,000 opioid-related fatalities in 2016. That year, 40% of all opioid overdose deaths — about 17,000 — involved prescription opioids.
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app.com - NJ addiction: State's record on battling opioid epidemic
Posted 1/31/2018
In 2017, New Jersey took some big steps to battle the opioid crisis. The New Jersey Legislature in February restricted the initial prescriptions for opioids to five pills, the toughest limit in the nation. The National Institute on Drug Abuse earlier had called such prescription limits the most important way to bring the epidemic under control.
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usatoday.com: States curb pain pill prescribing to try to prevent opioid addiction
Posted 1/31/2018
CINCINNATI — Every morning Berthena Vance kisses the urn. It has been six months since her son, Brandon Greene, died from a suspected overdose. His mother cries frequently. And inconsolably.
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cnbc.com: Trump talks tough in State of the Union to end opioid crisis, but high schools get tougher
Posted 1/31/2018
Democratic lawmakers wore purple ribbons at Tuesday's State of the Union in an effort to raise awareness about America's opioid epidemic, but in the end President Donald Trump spent less than a minute talking about what is now the deadliest drug overdose crisis in the country's history, which claims 174 deaths per day, seven per hour.
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usatoday.com: With 175 Americans dying a day, what are the solutions to the opioid epidemic?
Posted 1/29/2018
More than 175 Americans will die today of drug overdoses. The daily death toll from drug overdoses is like a 737 crashing and killing all the passengers on board. If plane crashes like that happened a few days in a row, “we’d shut the skies down until we figured out the problem,” said former Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore.
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psychologytoday.com - Communicating About Addiction: Accuracy or Alienation?
Posted 1/25/2018
For decades, addiction has been characterized by images of graffiti-painted highway overpasses and alleyways strewn with discarded needles, drawing the line between those suffering from addiction and the "rest of us."
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usnews.com: Governors Ask Trump, Congress to Do More on Opioid Crisis
Posted 1/23/2018
Governors are calling on President Trump and Congress to do more to fight an opioid epidemic that's killing 90 Americans a day.
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politico.com: First There Was Prince. Now Tom Petty. When Will America Finally Wake Up to the Opioid Crisis?
Posted 1/23/2018
hen pop star Prince died in April 2016, a gaggle of health care researchers and reporters—including me—tried to see the silver lining in his surprising, opioid-linked death. If even Prince, a famous teetotaler with access to the best medical care could end up addicted to painkillers, surely that would show that the opioid epidemic was reaching every corner of America. Maybe in death, his celebrity could illuminate the high stakes of the crisis and force a reckoning.
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nbcnewyork.com: New York City Files $500 Million Lawsuit Against Drug Companies Over Opioid Deaths
Posted 1/23/2018
The lawsuit aims to recover expenses the city will incur in combating the crisis