OPIOIDS

STATISTICS & TRENDS

New CDC Statistics Reveal Deepening Drug Epidemic

New evidence compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveals that we do not yet have the opioid epidemic or the loss of life from drug overdoses under control yet. We’re not even close.

STATISTICS & TRENDS

Solving the Opioid Crisis: What Has to Happen to Return Prescription Control to the Right Hands? Part III

Let’s take a look at an ideal world—a world where drugs are only given when they are truly needed to improve health, where there is no undue or skewed influence causing patients to ask for specific types of medication, where doctors use nothing but...

STATISTICS & TRENDS

Solving the Opioid Crisis: The Effects of Misplaced Control, Part II

When doctors prescribe any drug, it should only be done to improve a patient’s health, right? Over the last few decades, prescribing practices have begun to be influenced too heavily by the wrong parties. Millions of Americans have suffered as a result.

STATISTICS & TRENDS

Solving the Opioid Crisis: Returning Control of Prescription Drugs to the Right Hands, Part I

Most Americans know we’re in the midst of a deadly opioid epidemic. But few realize that control of the rate and volume of prescribing addictive painkillers has moved into the wrong hands. Get educated now on this vital topic.

STATISTICS & TRENDS

Failed Senate Investigation Could Have Saved Lives

In 2012, the Senate Finance Committee opened an investigation that could have revealed a hidden influence contributing to the loss of thousands of American lives. IF the report on this investigation had ever been published.

STATISTICS & TRENDS

Why NOW Is the Most Dangerous Time in History to be Addicted to Opioids

Fentanyl as a painkiller is not new but as an illicit drug pervading the American drug market, it is a threat that’s only a few years old. And a deadly, deadly threat it is, too…

STATISTICS & TRENDS

Will Blue Lights Succeed in Stopping Pennsylvania Overdoses?

Some businesses with public restrooms are installing intense blue lights to prevent overdoses because they make it hard for drug users to locate their blue veins. How much will this measure help prevent overdoses?

STATISTICS & TRENDS

California Leads the Effort to Reduce Opioid Prescribing

On November 9, 2017, California Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 1048 Health care: Pain Management and Schedule II Drug Prescriptions into law. The two provisions of this law were simple but indicate a major shift in attitudes toward prescribing opioid painkillers.

STATISTICS & TRENDS

Meth: The Biggest Problem Drug for Arkansas

Arkansas is a very rural state with widely scattered population centers. These remote areas permit the infiltration of Mexican drug cartels who bring addictive, deadly substances into the state.

STATISTICS & TRENDS

U.S. Government Takes Next Step Toward Addressing Public Health Emergency

On October 26, 2017, President Trump formally declared the nation’s opioid epidemic to be public health emergency and directed agencies and resources to overcome this tragic situation.

STATISTICS & TRENDS

Who’s Taking America’s Opioid Painkillers?

A new analysis of prescribing patterns for opioid painkillers revealed that three-quarters of these pills go to just 10% of patients. Might a careful analysis of the needs of this small group help curb overprescribing?

STATISTICS & TRENDS

Does our Opioid Epidemic Warrant a National Emergency Declare?

There’s been a lot of talk about declaring a national emergency to direct resources toward overcoming our epidemic of opioid overdose deaths. Do the events of the last couple of years really warrant this declare? See what you think.

STATISTICS & TRENDS

Should Pharmaceutical Companies be Held Accountable for Opioid Deaths?

In the last few years, the massive role pharmaceutical companies played in increasing the U.S. rate of addiction has been revealed. Is it time to hold these huge corporations responsible for their misdeeds?

STATISTICS & TRENDS

Behind the Curtain of the Opioid Epidemic: The Companies That Profit

For a mother of a person struggling with opioid addiction, there’s only one motivation: Saving her child’s life. For a number of pharmaceutical companies, there's an entirely different motivation: Raking in billions in profits from drugs that are more...

STATISTICS & TRENDS

What Two New Forecasts of Drug Overdose Deaths Missed

In the last few weeks, two major companies have published estimates and predictions of the number of Americans who will be lost to lose to drug overdoses. But both estimates seem to miss a piece of that big picture.

STATISTICS & TRENDS

How the U.S. Opioid Overdose Rate Misrepresents the Real Problem

In 2015, we lost 44,000 people to overdoses. But if we knew how many had been saved with naloxone, we would truly know the full extent of our crisis of opioid addiction and overdose.

STATISTICS & TRENDS

Opioid Epidemic Forecast: Half a Million Americans could be Killed in the Next 10 Years

A new article released by STAT shines a harsh light on the reality of the opioid epidemic in America. Drug overdoses already kill more Americans under age 50 than anything else. There are now nearly 100 deaths each day from opioids—that number could...

STATISTICS & TRENDS

China Bans Four Kinds of Fentanyl —Why Won’t This Help the U.S.?

After months of dedicated work by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Chinese government has banned the production of four highly dangerous synthetic opioids. Learn why this may not make things much better in the U.S.

STATISTICS & TRENDS

Big Pharma Seeks Expansion Following the Model of Illicit Drug Dealers

In Part I of this series, we looked at the emergence of an opioid epidemic in the U.S. that was fueled by the overprescribing of painkillers by doctors in every corner of the country. Now it looks like this problem may soon take on global proportions.

STATISTICS & TRENDS

Is America’s Opioid Epidemic Going International?

Over the last several years, hundreds of thousands of American families have suffered the heartbreak of losing someone they love to a drug overdose. Now, it appears that this scourge may begin to wreak a similar havoc in other countries as pharmaceutical...