Kellyanne Conway Will Be White House Opioid Czar

President Trump is finally acquiescing to his opioid commission’s recommendation that he swiftly appoint an “opioid czar” to coordinate the federal government’s response to the rapidly worsening opioid epidemic.

And his pick is: Former campaign manager and West Wing strategist Kellyanne Conway, according to Buzzfeed. The pick is significant: Thanks to her frequent television appearances both now and during the campaign, Conway is one of the administration’s most visible figures. Tom Marino, Trump"s previous nominee for the position, withdrew after it was revealed he pushed for a bill that made it harder for law enforcement to crack down on opioid drug manufacturers.

As many are already aware, drug-overdose deaths have skyrocketed in recent years, driven primarily by opioids, particularly powerful synthetic opioid drugs that have tainted the US heroin supply and have led to an unprecedented number of accidental overdoses. Last year alone, it’s estimated that 64,000 Americans died from drug overdoses.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that Conway would be coordinating the opioid response effort from the White House. Of course, the position of director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, another agency that would presumably be heavily involved in the administration"s response, remains vacant since Marino withdrew his name from consideration.

The opioid crisis played heavily in Trump’s campaign rhetoric and after taking office he appointed a commission led by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to compile a report on effective strategies for combating the crisis. The committee issued more than 50 recommendations, most of which have yet to be implemented, and many likely never will be. Last month, Trump declared the opioid abuse epidemic a national public health crisis, but declined to declare it a national emergency, which would’ve allowed states to receive federal disaster relief funding.

"It is a positive sign, she is a high profile figure in the administration, showing the administration takes this seriously," opioid policy expert Andrew Kolodny of Brandeis University told BuzzFeed News.

 

But Kolodny noted the administration still hasn"t named a head for its Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), or released a strategy to combat the crisis (one is promised in February), or requested any money from Congress to fill the depleted national public health emergency fund — now down to $66,000 — to pay for its health emergency declaration.

Trump has asked her "to coordinate and lead the effort from the White House," Sessions said at a news conference in remarks that went beyond prepared ones from the event. Sessions also announced $12 million in grants to state and local police departments, and the opening of a new Drug Enforcement Agency field office in Louisville to combat illicit opioid use in Appalachia. He also ordered each US attorney"s office to name an opioid coordinator.

"I know that this crisis is daunting — the death rates are stunning — and it can be discouraging," Sessions said. "But we will turn the tide."

When Christie’s commission was working, Conway sat in on many of the panel"s meetings and has been heavily involved with crafting the administration"s response to the crisis. Sessions touted Conway"s communication skills at the news conference, perhaps signaling an administration push for public service announcements aimed at changing public attitudes towards opioid addiction.

"Stemming overdose deaths will take a broad interagency approach led by someone with a singular focus and extensive knowledge of the drivers of - and solutions to  the epidemic," former ONDCP official Regina LaBelle told BuzzFeed. "Therefore, a Senate confirmed Director of National Drug Control Policy should lead this effort."

Calls for Trump to appoint an opioid czar have intensified in recent days. Earlier this week, Axios published a list of reasons why Trump should appoint someone to coordinate the federal government"s response to the epidemic. Axios made the case for appointing a White House drug policy coordinator, the path Trump eventually chose.

"There"s only so much money and human capacity to go around. A centralized authority figure could help make sure agencies aren"t duplicating each other"s work, and set priorities those agencies might not arrive at on their own, but which would contribute more to the broader, inter-agency effort."

However, apparently not everybody agrees on the need to appoint an opioid czar. At a congressional hearing in Baltimore on Tuesday, Christie, who headed a presidential report panel on the opioid crisis, had called the clamor for a US opioids czar "overblown." The steps needed to counter the overdose crisis are well understood, he said, starting with limiting over-prescriptions of painkillers, cutting fentanyl exports from China, and providing the overdose remedy naloxone to communities, and don"t need a czar to kick start.

"Enough To Kill 5 Million People": Authorities Make One Of Biggest Fentanyl Busts In History

The Acting United States Attorney for the District of Nebraska announced earlier this morning that a joint force involving both the Drug Enforcement Administration and Nebraska State Patrol made one of the largest fentanyl busts in the history of the country.  According to authorities, 27 year old Edgar Navarro-Aguirre of California was arrested at an Amtrak station in Omaha carrying 15 kilos (33 pounds) of the deadly opioid.  Here is more from a local NBC affiliate:

Navarro-Aguirre was traveling on the Amtrak train and waiting at the station when a Drug Enforcement Administration agent was doing a routine surveillance there and noticed a suspicious person with a bag.

"We have officers that are trained to pick out people that are different than the normal traveling public," Nebraska State Patrol Lt. Jason Scott said.

According to an affidavit, Navarro-Aguirre said it was his friend"s bag, and he denied that anything illegal was inside.

Inside Navarro-Aguirre"s luggage was 15 vacuum-sealed bundles of what forensic chemists determined was pure or nearly pure fentanyl.

"This fentanyl seizure is the largest ever in Nebraska and one of the largest in the nation," a news released from the U.S. Attorney"s Office said.

For those who may not be familiar with this deadly epidemic, fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 40-50 times more potent than herion and has resulted in a wave of overdoses across the country, and particularly in the midwest.  Experts say it only takes a small amount, about 3 milligrams, for the drug to be fatal.

"This is playing Russian Roulette knowing every cylinder has a bullet in it," DEA Associate Special Agent in Charge Matt Barden said.

With that in mind, the amount seized by authorities in its pure form would be enough to kill approximately 4.9 million people, or nearly the entire populations of Iowa and Nebraska.

"I think it was literally one mishap away from something extremely tragic for Nebraska," Lt. Scott said, "dropping a suitcase or it being cut open, this is in a public venue, this was not in a private room."

As the New York Times pointed out last month, fentanyl is estimated to have killed over 20,000 people in the U.S. in 2016, a 5x increase over just a couple of years.

Drug overdoses killed roughly 64,000 people in the United States last year, according to the first governmental account of nationwide drug deaths to cover all of 2016. It’s a staggering rise of more than 22 percent over the 52,404 drug deaths recorded the previous year — and even higher than The New York Times’s estimate in June, which was based on earlier preliminary data.

Drug overdoses are expected to remain the leading cause of death for Americans under 50, as synthetic opioids — primarily fentanyl and its analogues — continue to push the death count higher. Drug deaths involving fentanyl more than doubled from 2015 to 2016, accompanied by an upturn in deaths involving cocaine and methamphetamine. Together they add up to an epidemic of drug overdoses that is killing people at a faster rate than the H.I.V. epidemic at its peak.

The explosion in fentanyl deaths and the persistence of widespread opioid addiction have swamped local and state resources. Communities say their budgets are being strained by the additional needs — for increased police and medical care, for widespread naloxone distribution and for a stronger foster care system that can handle the swelling number of neglected or orphaned children.

Navarro-Aguirre is facing a charge of possession with intent to distribute 400 grams or more of a mixture or substance containing fentanyl. The penalty carries a minimum of 10 years with a maximum of life in prison.  The 27-year-old will appear in federal court Friday afternoon.

Visualizing America's Disappearing Workforce

In his September 2017 paper entitled "Where Have All the Workers Gone? An Inquiry into the Decline of the U.S. Labor Force Participation Rate", Alan B. Krueger of Princeton University explores the dramatic fall in labor force participation in the U.S. from 1997 to 2017.

As Statista"s Martin Armstrong shows in the infographic below, over the last twenty years, the rate has fallen the most for the under 20"s, with the share of 16 to 17 year olds in work dropping by 18.4 and 16.2 percentage points for men and women, respectively.

You will find more statistics at Statista

As Krueger reports, last year, Italy was the only OECD country which had a lower participation rate of prime age men than the United States. One of the reasons posited by the research is the opioid crisis currently ravaging the country. Labor force participation rates have fallen more in areas where more opioid pain medication is prescribed. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the amount of opioids prescribed in 2015 was three times higher than it was in 1999.

As noted in the paper, while the direction of causality is not clear, a 2017 report by David Mericle entitled "The Opioid Epidemic and the U.S. Economy" states that “the opioid epidemic is intertwined with the story of declining prime-age participation, especially for men, and this reinforces our doubts about a rebound in the participation rate.”

But as we pointed out previously, after spending months, or maybe even years, running very complicated regressions that your simple mind could never possibly understand, Krueger would like for you to believe that it"s the growing opioid epidemic that is forcing men to sit on their couches all day rather than look for work.  Here"s a summary of his findings from the Brookings Institute:

The increase in opioid prescriptions from 1999 to 2015 could account for about 20 percent of the observed decline in men’s labor force participation (LFP) during that same period.

In “Where have all the workers gone? An inquiry into the decline of the U.S. labor force participation rate” (PDF), Princeton University’s Alan Krueger examines the labor force implications of the opioid epidemic on a local and national level.

Among other findings, the research suggests that:

• Regional variation in opioid prescription rates across the U.S. is due in large part to differences in medical practices, rather than varying health conditions. Pain medication is more widely used in counties where health care professionals prescribe greater quantities of opioid medication, with a 10 percent increase in opioid prescriptions per capita is associated with a 2 percent increase in the share of individuals who report taking a pain medication on any given day. When accounting for individuals’ disability status, self-reported health, and demographic characteristics, the effect is cut roughly in half, but remains statistically significant.

• Over the last 15 years, LFP fell more in counties where more opioids were prescribed. Krueger reaches this conclusion by linking 2015 county-level opioid prescription rates to individual level labor force data in 1999-2001 and 2014-16. For more on the relationship between prescription rates and labor force participation rate on the county-level.

Krueger also provided this very helpful map proving that opioid abuse is highly correlated to unemployment.  Of course, it couldn"t possibly be the case that opioid abuse is the result of high unemployment and the associated depression that goes along with it...no, the opioid abuse definitely came first.

So, what is Krueger"s solution to help reverse the seemingly perpetual decline in labor force participation rates?  If you guessed "Obamacare" then you"re absolutely right...and unfortunately, no, that is not a joke...here is the excerpt from page 38 of Krueger"s paper:

Third, addressing the decades-long slide in labor force participation by prime age men should be a national priority. This group expresses low levels of SWB and reports finding relatively little meaning in their daily activities. Because nearly half of this group reported being in poor health, it may be possible for expanded health insurance coverage and preventative care under the Affordable Care Act to positively affect the health of prime age men going forward.

And while we would never presume to be smart enough to question the very thorough, impartial research of a Princeton economist, we do wonder whether it"s in any way relevant that labor force participation rates seemingly started to decline in 1965...

...at exactly the same time that welfare spending started to surge?

It"s probably just a coincidence.

Inside The Opioid Crisis That You're Not Allowed To See

Via StockBoardAsset.com,

Earlier this month, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions unveiled a plan to go after doctors and pharmacies suspected of healthcare fraud by oversubscribing opioids. America’s opioid epidemic killed 33,000 people in 2015 making it the worst drug crisis in our history. Last week, President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a national emergency allowing the executive branch to direct funds towards treatment facilities and supplying police officers with naloxone.

As a socio-economist on the front lines of the opioid crisis in Baltimore, Maryland, I am about to take you through an opioid experience like you’ve never seen before. We’re going to travel into the inner city of Baltimore and interview current and former addicts of opioids and heroin. Some of these individuals used heroin 15-minutes before the cameras started rolling.

These individuals have never been given the chance to tell their story until now. Baltimore’s mainstream news is not allowed to share this because it breaks the narrative that everything is awesome. It turns out that Baltimore could have the largest methadone clinic in the United States called Turning Point Clinic. Each of the interviewees are current and past patients of the clinic and speak very negatively about it. A similar description of Baltimore is heard from each of the interviewees of a hellacious city with decades of deindustrialization, drug abuse, and violent crime.

In the first video, three women who are current or past addicts of opioids tell the story of clinics, doctors, and pharmacies flooding the street of Baltimore with opioids. Gina mainly speaks about the Turning Point Clinic - how a preacher who operates the facility went from “nothing to now wearing $1000 gators, flying private jets, and driving Bentleys”. As described by one of the women, it looks like ‘zombie-land’ outside of the clinic.

In the second video, Gina speaks about her addiction to opioids and how she overcame the troubles through a strong-will. The next women to speak is Wanda, who is currently in pain management at Turning Point Clinic and speaks about how the opioid crisis is destroying America’s youth. I then ask the question about record number of homicides in Baltimore, and Wanda says opioids are a big part of that.

In the third video, ‘John Doe’ shot up on heroin 15-minutes before giving us the interview. He is an active patient at the Turning Point Clinic and describes it to be the largest methadone clinic in the United States with 6k-10k patients per day. The illegal activity and the corruption around this clinic is highlighted in the video via ‘John Doe’ statements, along with truth bombs that will not disappointment.

Conclusion

We now have an understanding that opioids are big business in the hood. You’re not allowed to know about this, because only a select few in our society are allowed to prosper from it. It’s unfortunate that drug trade is the most prevalent type of good flowing around low income areas across the United States. We wouldn’t expect nothing else after 50-years of deindustrialization and the bottom 90% of Americans left to rot.

America’s inner cities have to change or the collapse of an empire is on the horizon. Doesn’t help when 96 million Americans are out of the workforce.

Drug Overdoses Now The Leading Killer Of American Adults Under 50

The opioid crisis that is ravaging urban and suburban communities across the US claimed an unprecedented 59,000 lives last year, according to preliminary data gathered by the New York Times. If accurate, that’s equivalent to a roughly 19% increase over the approximately 52,000 overdose deaths recorded in 2015, the NYT reported last year.

Overdoses, made increasingly common by the introduction of fentanyl and other powerful synthetic opioids into the heroin supply, are now the leading cause of death for Americans under 50. And all evidence suggests the problem has continued to worsen in 2017. One coroner in Western Pennsylvania told a local newspaper that his office is literally running out of room to store the bodies, and that it was recently forced to buy a larger freezer.

The initial data points to large increases in these types of 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, the Times estimated that overdose deaths increased by more than 25 percent in 2016.

In some Ohio counties, deaths from heroin have virtually disappeared. Instead, the primary 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; 97 tested positive for fentanyl or another analogue.

In some states in the western half of the US, data suggest deaths may have leveled off for the time being - or even begun to decline. Experts believe that the heroin supply west of the Mississippi River, traditionally dominated by a variant of the drug known as black tar which is smuggled over the border from Mexico, isn"t as easily adulterated with lethal analogues as the powder that"s common on the East Coast.

First responders are finding that, with fentanyl, carfentanil and the other analogues, overdoses can be so severe that multiple shots of naloxone - the anti-overdose medication that often goes by the brand name Narcan - are needed to revive people. One EMT in Warren County, Ohio told the Times that sometimes as many as 14 doses of Narcan are needed to revive a patient.

“It’s like a squirt gun in a house fire,” the EMT said.

But, as Robert Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch of the National Center for Health Statistics at the CDC explains, toxicology results, which are necessary to assign a cause of death, can take three to six months or longer.

“It’s frustrating, because we really do want to track this stuff,” he said.

While the process in each state varies slightly, death certificates are usually first filled out by a coroner, medical examiner or attending physician. These death certificates are then collected by state health departments and sent to the N.C.H.S., which assigns what’s called an ICD-10 code to each death. This code specifies the underlying cause of death, and it’s what determines whether a death is classified as a drug overdose, the NYT reported.

We can say with confidence that drug deaths rose a great deal in 2016, but it is hard to say precisely how many died or in which places drug deaths rose most steeply. Because of the delay associated with toxicology reports and inconsistencies in the reported data, our estimate could vary from the true number by several thousand.