Dental painkillers are often a first exposure point for people susceptible to opioid use disorder. This experience, experts say, is often the first event that leads to addiction to opioids. But is it necessary? Young people are rarely exposed to painkillers outside of the ER. When you break a bone or sprain an ankle as
Researchers: Fentanyl Test Strips Can Change Drug Users’ Behaviors, Prevent OD’s Nearly 72,000 overdoses took place last year in the US, and experts say that many of these were due to street drugs being tainted with fentanyl, which is nearly 100 times stronger than heroin. And now, a Brown University study aimed at stopping overdoses found that
Heroin use has dropped dramatically among young adults in the past year, according to the 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Released by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration on Friday, the report also showed that young people are abusing prescription opioids less as well. In 2015, SAMHSA estimated 8.5 percent
Facebook, who recently vowed to take opioid sales and promotion on their platform more seriously in the wake of several Congressional hearings about their platform, has now decided to help fight addiction. For Facebook users, this means that when they are searching for the drug via the platform, they will instead find resources to help
In April, the city of Portland filed a $1 billion lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies. The lawsuit mostly focuses on the culpability of opioid manufacturers including Purdue Pharma, Teva, and Cephalon. Five physicians also are named. One is a former Mercy Hospital primary care doctor, and because of the lawsuit, the hospital says it’s leaving partnerships
FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb wants doctors to learn in-depth about prescribing opioids. It may seem like a no-brainer, and a lot of addiction advocates have wondered why few doctors learn adequate pain management techniques in med school. When it comes to prescribing medications, doctors often look for the most obvious problems with the drugs as
Hepatitis C is one of the deadliest diseases in the United States, mostly because it causes first cirrhosis of the liver and then complete liver failure. Sadly, the rates in New York have reached proportions that have caused the health department to declare the disease’s spread as a “hidden epidemic.” Officials say the increases in
President Trump is in the midst of a plan to stem opioid use, but his controversial ideas seem to be based more on the failed war on drugs model rather than science-backed drug treatment plans that are accessible for all. In fact, part of his ideas to curtail opioid use includes putting primary drug dealers
A heroin vaccine? It’s closer than we think. A vaccine that has been formulated to help block the effects of heroin in mice and rats in proving effective for researchers, and will pave the way for formulating a similar vaccine for humans, according to the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Developed between researchers with the U.S.
First responders and the treatment community as a whole give communities access to some of the tools they need to battle a raging addiction epidemic, there are a lot of measures that have been proposed to keep people from ever starting drugs. While some pharmaceutical companies are becoming mired in lawsuits for making and marketing
