Meth Crisis In West Virginia - Overdose Deaths Soar To Record High

According to a new study from the Health Statistic Center of West Virginia, overdose deaths related to methamphetamine have increased by 500 percent in just four short years.

In fact, a record-number 129 people have passed from overdoses in 2017 - and that number is expected to climb through the holiday season.

As the late American-German poet, Charles Bukowski once said, “My dear, Find what you love and let it kill you.”  It seems as some West Virginians have taken it to heart...

Chad Napier, prevention officer with the Appalachian High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area said, about half the meth overdoses involve fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that remains the leading cause of drug overdoses in the state. Napier further said, addicts are using meth mixed with fentanyl, sometimes unknowingly, which is the reason for the overdose surge.

In November, we highlighted how 60.1% of heroin tested by authorities in Canada for the 2017 period contained fentanyl. We also noted, cocaine and methamphetamine saw a noticeable surge as well. The situation in Canada is critical with one funeral home in Vancouver warning of “too many bodies.”

As we’ve pointed out in the article, fentanyl is being shipped from China into Canada, then distributed across North America. In West Virginia’s case, meth dealers have graduated from their Breaking Bad recreational vehicles— to now demanding super meth from extravagant laboratories in Mexico.

So far, Kanawha and Cabell counties in West Virginia have been hit the hardest in meth-related overdoses. About thirty Kanawha residents and twenty eight in Cabell have died with the epidemic spreading to other counties such as Raleigh and Wood.

“A lot of these people don’t know what they’re getting,” Napier said.

 

“We’re seeing the meth cut with fentanyl, so that’s increasing the meth [overdose] numbers, I believe.”

The Health Statistic Center of West Virginia said, meth-related overdoses across the state have dramatically increased over the past four years from 21 in 2014, 49 in 2015, 107 in 2016 to 129 deaths so far in 2017.

Dr. Rahul Gupta, state health commissioner warned, residents are mixing meth and opioids producing a dangerous concoction that could kill anyone who comes in contact with it. The journey of the Mexican-made meth started in the southern states and has now spread to the east.

“We’re seeing a lot more meth, and it’s a different kind of meth than we were seeing five or six years ago,” Gupta said.

 

“There’s a push from the cartels to get these drugs out there.”

So it seems,  Mexican drug cartels have seen one too many episodes of Breaking Bad, as they attempt to empire build across the United States killing what’s left of America’s middle class through a powerful concoction of meth and synthetic opioids.

Be Careful What You Sniff In Canada

A new crisis is developing in Canada and it’s not the housing bubble.

A far more sinister one, that is taking the country by storm, as a new wave of fentanyl has washed up on the shores of Canada from an unknown origin most likely China, and has made it onto city streets.

To our friends in the business district of Toronto, be - careful what you sniff - it might contain fentanyl. 

Here’s why:

The number of positive tests for fentanyl in samples of heroin seized by law enforcement agencies across Canada have exploded. Health Canada’s Drug Analysis Service (DAS) revealed to CBC News that in 2012 .08% of 2,337 heroin samples tested positive for fentanyl. Fast forward to today and that number stands at 60.1% of 3,337 heroin samples, an astronomical jump visualized below.

Seems as China has turned on the fentanyl spigot in 2016 and 2017…

Over the past five-years of tests, marijuana samples seized by law enforcement agencies contained no fentanyl. But on a more interesting note, cocaine and methamphetamine seized by law enforcement agencies reported an increase. A potential health hazard for the modern day bankers in Toronto…..

The most common drugs the service tests for include marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl, heroin, hydromorphone, oxycodone, MDMA, alprazolam and GHB.

 

Fentanyl was not identified in any of the marijuana samples tested over the five-year period, while cocaine and methamphetamine saw increases from 0.01 per cent to 1.8 per cent and zero per cent to 1.7 per cent, respectively. Overall, the figures are stark. In 2012, only 217 of the street drug samples tested positive for fentanyl. Just as the number of lives claimed by the deadly opioid has skyrocketed since then, so too has the number of times fentanyl has showed up in samples of illegal street drugs. As of Sept. 30, DAS found fentanyl in 4,568 samples this year – an increase of 2,005 per cent.

According to Dr. David Juurlink, head of clinical pharmacology and toxicology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto:

“...the exponential increase of street drugs testing positive for fentanyl over the last five years doesn’t surprise.The illicit drug supply has never been more dangerous because of the profusion of fentanyl-related compounds. This is why so many people are dying. They’re dying because the drugs they’re using contain, you know, much more opioid than they thought.”

In fact, Juurlink is right as shown below...

Dr. Michael Krausz, a professor of psychiatry specializing in addiction at the University of British Columbia, explains drug dealers “want to save money or make higher profits”, so fentanyl is mixed into drugs like heroin or cocaine to stretch their supplies.

Krausz also said drug dealers are not skilled enough to keep fentanyl doses in a survivable range while mixing it with heroin or cocaine, which is why many experts believe overdoses are occurring. Simply, the end user is not realizing what he/she is getting and ends up dead.

Juurlink said several factors sparked fentanyl’s rise:

• increase in demand for opioids as overprescription of painkillers led to addiction


• flood of prescription medication


• fentanyl patches


• blackmarket

In British Columbia, 80% of the street drugs are laced with fentanyl. Four mothers who have lost their sons to overdoses advocate for state controlled drugs.

The Globe And Mail explains: Fentanyl’s deadly path

China is a key source of illicit fentanyl coming to Canada in response to demand from prescription-painkiller addicts as well as users of street drugs, traffickers are turning to a pharmaceutical-manufacturing giant to produce deadly, black-market versions of fentanyl, according to the RCMP.

Across Canada, police are seizing illicit fentanyl from China - Three examples from 2015: A package of fentanyl declared as a muffler was stopped on its way to Calgary; a man in Brampton, Ont., was charged with importing more than 500 grams of the drug; and a parcel destined for Halifax was found to contain 514 grams, worth about $1-million.

Once the drug is in, it is processed – often in Western Canada - Because illicit fentanyl and fentanyl analogues are so potent, the white powder is cut or mixed with other drugs and fillers, before it can be sold on the street. Most of the 21 clandestine labs dismantled by police since 2013 operated in British Columbia and Alberta, according to a Globe and Mail analysis.

Bootleg fentanyl is highly lucrative - The math works like this, according to Edmonton physician Hakique Virani: A kilogram of pure fentanyl powder costs $12,500. A kilo is enough to make 1,000,000 tablets. Each tab sells for $20 in major cities, for total proceeds of $20-million. In smaller markets, the street price is as high as $80.

Fentanyl has been found in police busts all over the country -  The first known fentanyl seizure in Canada was from a clandestine lab in Montreal in April, 2013. Since then, police have busted traffickers in almost every province and the Northwest Territories, for a total of 58 across the country, according to The Globe’s analysis.

Bottom line: China is flooding North America with fentanyl through shipping routes into Canada. The opioid crisis is far from over and its about to kick into hyperdrive. The one question we ask: how will bankers in Toronto and or on Wall Street deal with the very real possibility their blackmarket stimulants could contain fentanyl?

"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.

Police Seize Enough Fentanyl "To Kill Half Of NYC" In Recent Bust

The opioid crisis is killing tens of thousands of Americans a year as powerful synthetic drugs like fentanyl are increasingly mixed in with the heroin supply, killing unsuspecting addicts in greater numbers. These lab-manufactured opioids and their pharmacological cousins are so powerful, a 20-pound mixture of fentanyl and heroin that was recently seized by law enforcement was said to contain enough of the narcotic to kill half of New York City’s 9 million residents, according to one Drug Enforcement Administration agent who spoke with Consumerist.

The drugs were taken when DEA agents busted a heroin mill operating out of an apartment across the street from Central Park. Police arrested four men, including one who was posing as an Uber driver, for their alleged involvement in the drug-distributing ring.

According to NYC’s department of Health and Mental Hygiene, fentanyl – which is 50 times more potent than heroin - is driving a spike in fatal overdoses, which reached an all-time high of 1,374 deaths in 2016, a 46% increase over 2015. Nationwide, the rate of drug-related deaths per 100,000 people peaked at 19.7 during the third quarter, up from 16.7 during the same period a year earlier, according to government data released Tuesday. The increase was driven largely by opioids, specifically fentanyl, carfentanil and other synthetics. Deaths from drug overdoses in the US are believed to have surpassed the 60,000 mark last year.

“Fentanyl is the deadliest street drug to ever hit this country,” said DEA Special Agent-in-Charge James J. Hunt. “This seizure alone contains enough potency to kill half of the population of New York City, if laboratory analysis proves it is all fentanyl. Fentanyl is manufactured death that drug dealers are mixing with heroin.”

Here’s an account of the bust, courtesy of Consumerist:

“DEA agents were conducting surveillance near the building on Central Park West on Aug. 4 when they saw one defendant leaving with two boxes inside a large shopping bag. He got into a vehicle driven by another defendant, an Uber driver, with agents following behind.

Investigators stopped the vehicle, and observed the suspect sitting in the backseat with two boxes: One box was open and they could see a clear plastic bag containing a tan powdery substance inside.

After looking more closely at that box — the larger of the two — investigators say they also saw six large cylindrical packages wrapped in tape and plastic wrap.

And in the smaller box, officials spotted a large cylindrical package wrapped in tape and plastic wrap, and a clear plastic bag containing a tan powdery substance.

Agents seized the packages, and arrested both the Uber driver and the passenger. Meanwhile, investigators kept watching the building, and eventually observed a man previously identified as a member of a drug trafficking organization exiting with another man. When questioned by agents, he said he lived in the building, and admitted to having a gun and drugs in the apartment."

The bust also generated some laughable headlines. According to the Verge, the dealers had branded the some of the packaged heroin with the Uber logo. The drug crew used other corporate logos, like McDonald’s, as well as generic names like “Black Friday.”

President Donald Trump’s Commission on Drug Addiction and Combating the Opioid Crisis urged the president to declare a state of emergency to help combat the crisis. On Tuesday, Trump said the US has “no alternative” but to triumph over the crisis.

The US already has the highest rate of drug-related deaths in the world.

The Opioid Crisis Is Even Worse Than We Thought

America’s opioid epidemic is now killing more than 100 people every day, fueling a public-health crisis that’s straining state and local resources – even forcing at least one Pennsylvania coroner to increase his freezer capacity to make room for all of the bodies.

And according to one recently published study, the epidemic may be killing more Americans than previously believed. The study, published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, suggests that certain states may have underestimated the rate of opioid- and heroin-related deaths, skewing national death totals by more than 20%. In 2014, the most recent year covered by the study, the rate of opioid-related deaths was, in reality, 24% higher than the official count.   

Meanwhile, data from the CDC released Tuesday show that drug overdose deaths peaked in the third quarter of last year, with 19.7 for every 100,000 people, compared with 16.7 in the same period the year before.

Trump signed an executive order in March creating a national opioid commission to recommend strategies for combating the crisis. The commission, which is being led by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, has already urged Trump to declare a national emergency to deal with the opioid crisis. A final list of recommendations is expected by Oct. 1.

"We will fight this deadly epidemic and the United States will win," Trump said during a press briefing on Tuesday called to address the opioid epidemic. "We will win. We have no alternative."

Discrepancies arise when death certificates don’t specify the class of drug, or the specific drug, responsible for a given death. In certain states, the corrected opioid-related death rates were significantly higher than what had previously been reported. In Pennsylvania, which had the highest discrepancy, the real rate was more than double the official rate, with deaths per 100,000 rising to 17.8 from 8.5. Indiana, Alabama, Louisiana and Kentucky were also guilty of “substantially” underreporting death rates.

According to government data, Pennsylvania had the 32nd highest reported opioid mortality rate and the 20th highest reported heroin mortality rate in the country. But the study found that nearly half of opioid and heroin-related deaths weren’t counted. When the data were corrected, Pennsylvania’s ranking rose to the fourth-highest opioid mortality rate, and seventh-highest heroin mortality rate.

The corrected data also yielded more “coherent” geographic patterns by eliminated discrepancies caused by quirks in how fatality data are collected in each state.

“Specifically, the corrected death rates demonstrate that opioid involved mortality was concentrated in the Mountain States, Rust Belt, and Industrial North—extending to New England—and much of the South, whereas heroin deaths were particularly high in the Northeast and Rust Belt, but less so in the South or Mountain States. The results were less apparent when using reported rates, because high mortality in states such as Pennsylvania and Indiana were concealed by a frequent lack of specificity about drug involvement on death certificates.”

The study, which analyzed data on drug-related deaths collected between 2008 and 2014, found that heroin-related deaths increased more rapidly in most states, except for Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska. Nationwide, the increase in heroin-involved mortality was underestimated by around 18%, while the change in opioid-related fatalities was negligible.

Drug-overdose deaths in 2015 killed 52,000 Americans, more than gun homicides or car accidents. Preliminary data suggest that number grew to nearly 60,000 in 2016. In one Ohio county, deaths from drug overdoses – the bulk of which were caused by powerful synthetic opioids like fentanyl – surpassed deaths from homicides, suicides and car crashes combined.

And 2017 is expected to be even worse.

Read the full study below:

2017.08.08ajpmopiates by zerohedge on Scribd

Commission to Trump: Declare National Emergency over Opioid Epidemic

President Trump’s opioid commission has urged him to declare a national state of emergency over America’s burgeoning opioid crisis. The recommendation comes from a preliminary draft of the commission’s report. [2]

By declaring an emergency, Trump’s cabinet would be able to take action, and Congress would be forced to fund potential solutions to the epidemic.

Drug overdoses likely killed more people in 2016 than the entire Vietnam War. The previous year, opioid overdoses claimed the lives of more people than car crashes, gun violence, and HIV/AIDs combined, when the AIDS epidemic was at its height in 1995.

The commission says in the report:

“With approximately 142 Americans dying every day, America is enduring a death toll equal to September 11th every three weeks. After September 11th, our President and our nation banded together to use every tool at our disposal to prevent any further American deaths.

Your declaration would empower your cabinet to take bold steps and would force Congress to focus on funding and empowering the Executive Branch even further to deal with this loss of life.”

Read: UN Says It Will Monitor the Fentanyl Market

The lawmakers made several other recommendations, including:

• Grant waiver approvals for all 50 states to get rid of treatment barriers in the Medicaid program that exclude the federal Institutes for Mental Diseases.

• Mandate education initiatives with the assistance of medical and dental schools, and by amending the Controlled Substances Act, to require that prescribers receive better training about the treatment of pain and addiction.

• Provide federal support for state-based prescription drug monitoring programs. This will allow doctors to closely monitor a patient’s prescription drug history, to spot patients who might be doctor shopping for more opioids, or if a patient has a history of abusing drugs.

• Provide more funding for research into non-opioid painkillers.

• Boost efforts to block illegal fentanyl shipments.

The commission warns in the report that “If this scourge has not found you or your family yet, without bold action by everyone, it soon will.” [2]

They go on:

“You, Mr. president, are the only person who can bring this type of intensity to the emergency and we believe you have the will to do so and to do so immediately. Our citizens are dying. We must act boldly to stop it.”

The Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis is chaired by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R), North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D), former Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D), and Dr. Bertha Madras.

Sources:

[1] Vox

[2] USA Today

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About Julie Fidler:
	Julie Fidler is a freelance writer, legal blogger, and the author of Adventures in Holy Matrimony: For Better or the Absolute Worst. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two ridiculously spoiled cats. She occasionally pontificates on her blog.

Panel: The FDA Desperately Needs to Review its Approach to Opioids

In a report, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) is calling on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to review the safety and effectiveness of opioid painkillers. The panel of experts says monumental changes are needed to the way in which physicians treat pain, their patients cope with pain, and government and private insurers support individuals’ treatment for chronic pain. [1]

However, the panel says in no uncertain terms that efforts to prevent future opioid addicts will unfortunately drive some current painkiller abusers to seek harder street drugs, including heroin and fentanyl.

The panel wrote that:

“It is therefore ethically imperative to couple a strategy for reducing lawful access to opioids with an investment in treatment for the millions of individuals [already addicted to opioids].

The FDA commissioned the panel in 2016 to shape advice for how the agency should tackle the nation’s opioid epidemic. Many experts, including those on the panel, say the answer to the problem lies in regulating drug companies, as well as prescribers.

As we speak, lawmakers in Washington are debating a healthcare bill that would reduce access to addiction treatment – the polar opposite of what the panel calls for in its comprehensive report. What is needed, panel members say, is for states and the federal government to provide “universal treatment to addiction in hospitals, community-based programs, jails, and prisons.

The topic is a bone of contention for many people who don’t believe taxpayers should have to foot the bill for such treatment. But according to the panel, it is the only way to bring an eventual end to the opioid crisis sweeping America. Make no mistake about it – it is going to take years to gain control over the situation.

Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control

A member of the report committee, Dr. Aaron Kesselheim of Harvard Medical School said:

“Our recommendation is for a much more systematic approach, integrating public health decision-making into all aspects of opioid review and approval. It would be an ambitious undertaking.” [2]

While the panel stopped short of acknowledging that the war on drugs has not worked, it urged states to reject the current trend of cracking down hard on illicit drug use. This, it said, will reduce harm to opioid users who have turned to the streets to supply their habit.

Instead, the panel said that states should adopt needle exchanges, safe havens for those who inject drugs, and wider access to naloxone – a drug that reverses overdoses from opioids, including heroin. [1]

In deciding how to regulate opioids, the FDA should study how the drug will affect patients’ families, society at-large, and the black market for drugs, the panel continued.

Kesselheim said:

“This is in distinction to the traditional approach that the FDA takes when it evaluates products. But the particular characteristics of opioids, we believe, requires a certain amount of what we term ‘opioid exceptionalism’ from the regulator.

… Overzealous promotional and financial relationships between the pharmaceutical manufacturers of opioids and physicians through the ’80s, ’90s, and 2000s, I think, at this point, has been shown to be a contributor to overprescribing in this area.” [3]

Other recommendations by the panel include:

• Requiring drug companies to follow stricter rules for marketing opioids than they would for other drugs.

• Developing campaigns to inform doctors and patients about other was of managing chronic pain. These campaigns should not be run by drug companies, however, even though many drug companies sponsor ongoing pain-management education programs for physicians.

Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control

In 2016, the CDC released fresh guidelines intended to limit the prescribing of opioids, though there is no legal mandate for physicians to follow them. The agency recommended, among other things, that:

• Doctors don’t immediately prescribe opioids to treat pain. Instead, physicians should prescribe non-drug interventions first, such as exercise therapy and weight loss.

• When a doctor does prescribe an opioid, he or she should start the patient on the lowest dose possible, and prescribe immediate-release opioids for short periods of time, rather than for weeks or months at a time.

• Doctors should urine-test patients to make sure they are following the prescription’s directions.

Read: The DEA Will Slash Opioid Production 25% by 2017

Also in 2016, the FDA published draft guidelines outlining testing standards for harder-to-abuse generic opioids. Under those guidelines, the FDA can only approve a generic painkiller if the maker can prove it is the bioequivalent of a brand-name medication. Prior to that, generic drugs were not individually scrutinized for safety and efficacy the way that brand-name drugs were.

Additionally, the FDA required black-box warnings – the FDA’s most serious drug warning – on all fast-acting opioids concerning the risks for addiction, misuse, overdose, and death.

Sources:

[1] Los Angeles Times

[2] The Street

[3] Pacific Standard

U.S. Centers for Disease Control

U.S. Centers for Disease Control

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About Julie Fidler:
	Julie Fidler is a freelance writer, legal blogger, and the author of Adventures in Holy Matrimony: For Better or the Absolute Worst. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two ridiculously spoiled cats. She occasionally pontificates on her blog.

Big Pharma Caught Bribing Family Doctors to Prescribe Drug 50X’s Stronger than Heroin

New Jersey — A scathing investigative report from NJ.com has revealed some startling and damning facts about the exponential increase in fentanyl overdoses and the rate at which family practitioners prescribed it. In the center of the equation are pharmaceutical companies who’ve been exposed for paying doctors millions to push their deadly drug.

Prior to 2013, most Americans, unless they knew someone dying of cancer or who lived in immense pain, never heard of fentanyl. Now, this drug, which is magnitudes more powerful than heroin and far deadlier, has become a household name — for all the wrong reasons.

Fentanyl was created to be used as part of anesthesia to help prevent pain after surgery or other medical procedures. It was also used to treat pain in the terminally ill as well as those with severe and chronic debilitating pain. However, in 2013, the unscrupulous big wigs in the pharmaceutical industry saw it as a means of making their already opioid-saturated market that much more lucrative — and addictive.

A dose of fentanyl the size of a grain of sand is lethal. But that didn’t stop companies like Insys Pharmaceutical from spending $1.67 million from 2013 to 2015 pushing this drug on doctors. To be clear, they were not only marketing fentanyl to those who actually benefit from it, but they were rewarding family doctors for giving it to people for things like getting their tonsils out.

During that period, fentanyl deaths increased tenfold from just 42 in 2013 to 417 in 2015.

As NJ.com points out, since late 2011, enough fentanyl has been dispensed to allow every person who has died of cancer in New Jersey to fill a prescription for the drug eight times.

READ MORE:  As Cops Throw People in Cages for Weed, the Makers of Deadly OxyContin Join the Ruling Class

As doctors and pharmaceutical companies get slaps on the wrist for dealing in this deadly drug, thousands of people across the country are dying at an increasing rate.

For the first time in U.S. History, more Americans died in 2016 of drug overdoses than were killed in the Vietnam War. Let that sink in.

Last year’s death toll in the War on Drugs was 59,000 killed, while during the entire Vietnam War, 1955 to 1975, 58,220 American service members’ lives were lost. And, thanks to the immoral and futile police approach to the drug problem, there appears to be no hope in sight for the tide to change.

According to NJ.com, data and documents show a system where pharmaceutical companies and doctors remain in a cozy and ethically dubious relationship, at best. It’s a system where cash and prescriptions go hand-in-hand. And it’s a system where, time and again, patients suffer and even die when something goes wrong, an occurrence that is far from rare.

In their investigation, NJ.com found some incredibly unscrupulous practices by doctors who were pushing fentanyl onto their patients while raking in all the extra cash from their cartel leaders in big pharma.

• An Edison doctor was sued in 2014 after allegedly prescribing fentanyl to a patient with a history of drug and alcohol abuse. The patient suffered severe brain damage.


• A Maplewood doctor lost her medical license after prescribing fentanyl to patients recovering from tonsillectomies in 2012, leading to the death of one of them.


• Last year, a Red Bank foot doctor allegedly prescribed fentanyl as “a favor” to clients, until one died.


• State investigators were examining the records of more than a dozen state doctors connected to fentanyl in late 2016.

READ MORE:  6 Execs from Pharma Co. who Lobbied for Illegal Pot, Arrested for Bribing Docs to Push Deadly Fentanyl

“There’s enough money going around that if you saw this in the abstract, you’d think there was a drug cartel happening,” said Arthur Caplan, head of the Division of Bioethics at New York University.

It is a drug cartel, it’s just a legal one. And, it’s one that is solely created and maintained by government granted monopolies and contracts.

As the Free Thought Project previously reported, one of the manufacturers of a fentanyl drug was exposed for lobbying against marijuana as it is a direct threat to their opioid market, as well as their synthetic marijuana business. As the federal government grants Insys permission to make legal synthetic cannabis, they simultaneously enforce a war that kidnap, cages, and kills people for the natural version.

If you want to know why there is a drug war, ask yourself, ‘who benefits from it’?

Legal pot is detrimental to the opioid crisis and reduces addiction. However, this is bad business for big pharma.

Opiate addiction, overdose, and accidental death problems might simply be avoided if, ironically enough, marijuana is made legal nationwide.

As TFTP has documented on several occasions, cannabis holds the promise of helping opiate addicts kick their addiction by substituting their cravings for opiates with the non-addictive pain killing properties of marijuana. And it’s not folklore. Doctors have experimented with cannabis as a substitute for opiates with high degrees of success.

Study after study has confirmed that medical cannabis access reduces harm from opioid abuse among the population. A recent study published in the Drug and Alcohol Dependency journal found that states with legal medical cannabis experience fewer hospitalizations related to opioids.

“Medical marijuana legalization was associated with 23% and 13% reductions in hospitalizations related to opioid dependence or abuse and [opioid pain reliever] OPR overdose, respectively; lagged effects were observed after policy implementation.”

Researchers from the University of California analyzed hospital administrative records for the period of 1997 to 2014. The author reported:

“This study demonstrated significant reductions on OPR- (opioid pain reliever) related hospitalizations associated with the implementation of medical marijuana policies. … We found reductions in OPR-related hospitalizations immediately after the year of policy implementation as well as delayed reductions in the third post-policy year.“

From the outside, this entire scenario looks like a case of big pharma pushing its deadly drugs while reaping massive profits. However, if we look closer, that scenario is not only made possible by, but fostered through, pharma’s ties to the state. As people beg the state for more regulation, real free enterprise solutions, like legal weed, are being ignored, or worse, prosecuted.

READ MORE:  JAMA Admits 30% of Drugs Approved by FDA-Approved Are Seriously Dangerous

Until this paradigm of government and pharmaceutical collusion and the war on drugs comes to an end, we can only predict that this epidemic of mass opioid overdoses to get far worse.

Opioids Killed More People In One Ohio County Last Year Than Car Accidents, Homicides, & Suicides Combined

As the national opioid crisis rages in the midwest and along the northern and mid-Atlantic states, Cuyahoga County has reported yet another disturbing statistic about the growing death toll from one of America’s most pressing health crises: Last year, deaths from drug overdoses in the county – the bulk of which were caused by powerful synthetic opioids like fentanyl – surpassed deaths from homicides, suicides and car crashes combined.

The county medical examiner’s office in Cuyahoga, which abuts the southern shore of the Ohio River, said the country, which is centered around Cleveland, recorded 666 overdose deaths lasts year.  Officials see no end in sight to the crisis and are projecting deaths to climb in 2017, according to the Cleveland.com.

"What we"ve seen over the beginning of 2017 is it"s getting off to a start that"s worse than 2016," Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas Gilson said last week in a news release.

Here’s a rundown of data from the county medical examiner’s office, as compiled by Cleveland.com.

The powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl was a factor in 399 of the 666 overdose deaths reported last year. Prevalence of these synthetic drugs has risen sharply since 2013 when it was involved in just five deaths. Another reason for the spike in deaths is that fentanyl is sometimes being mixed in with other drugs, usually heroin but also sometimes cocaine. The 399 fentanyl deaths reported last year included 117 deaths caused by fentanyl alone and 141 caused by a mix of fentanyl and heroin. Sixty-eight deaths were caused by a mix of fentanyl and cocaine, and 73 were caused by a mix of fentanyl, heroin and cocaine.

Two other powerful fentanyl analogues, Carfentanil and acetyl fentanyl, were responsible for 54 and 43 deaths, statistics show.

Deaths from opioid overdoses are most prevalent among young white males aged 18-24, according to expert who monitor the epidemic. But in Cuyahoga County, opioids are increasingly killing minorities as well. Fentanyl contributed to the deaths of 58 black people last year in Cuyahoga County, up from 25 in 2015. Just five black people were died from fentanyl use in 2014, according to Cleveland.com.

Still, 85 percent of the people killed by fentanyl last year were white.

Although opioid deaths accounted for the bulk of overdoses, cocaine related deaths also rose sharply in 2016.

There were 260 people who died after overdosing on the drug, or on cocaine mixed with other drugs, statistics show.

Cocaine resulted in 115 deaths in 2015; in fact, cocaine-related deaths have not risen higher than roughly 125 at any point in the past decade.

Fentanyl has been involved in the bulk of drug deaths. But heroin and painkillers were also linked to a greater number of deaths.

Opioids, which include heroin and fentanyl, were linked to 557 of the 666 overdose deaths last year in Cuyahoga County.

Overdose deaths worsened in each four-month trimester of 2016, the medical examiner"s office said.

According to the data, the county reported 140 deaths from January through April and 181 from May through August and 196 deaths between September and December.

In 2016, the county reported 475 violent deaths; that included 184 homicides, 172 suicides and 119 fatal crashes. Heroin and fentanyl, by contrast, killed 506.

Drug overdose deaths in the country are projected to increase from 666 in 2016 to 775 in 2017, the medical examiner’s office said. Heroin deaths are projected to drop, but officials are projecting an additional 200 cases involving fentanyl or cocaine.

"We are seeing epidemic levels of drug overdose deaths in this country," medical examiner Gilson told Cleveland.com in a statement. "It"s a big issue."

Cuyahoga is hardly unique; deaths from drug overdoses nationwide surpassed homicides for the first time in 2015 as the epidemic of heroin and opioid related deaths in the US continues to grow amid the dismal failure of the "war on drugs". 

One coroner in Montgomery Country, PA told a local newspaper that the morgue"s freezer is running out of room for bodies because of the high death toll from the epidemic.

President Donald Trump has vowed to combat the crisis, saying that his border wall would help curb the flow of drugs over the border from Mexico. But increasingly, drug dealers are ordering their drugs through websites hosted on the dark web, where fentanyl and other super-powerful synthetic opioids are widely available. These sites connect buyers with labs in China who will mail the drugs to US-based customers in unassuming packages that are difficult for customs to intercept.
 

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.

The United Nations Says It Will Monitor the Fentanyl Market

On March 16, the United Nations (U.N.) added 2 chemicals used to make the painkiller fentanyl to an international list of controlled substances. Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield, the chief U.S. State Department counter-narcotics official, has hailed the move, but acknowledged that it won’t immediately decrease illegal trafficking of the chemicals. [1] [2]

Source: Healthland Heart Region

Read: Even the “Safest” of RX Opioids Highly Addictive, Experts Say

Fentanyl is a man-made opioid that can be up to 100 times more powerful than morphine. It is approved to treat severe pain, particularly in patients with advanced cancer, and is considered to be America’s newest deadly drug due to misuse.

In March 2015, the DEA issued a nationwide alert after more than 700 overdose deaths were linked to fentanyl in late 2013 and 2014. In 2015, fentanyl overdoses claimed the lives of 33,000 Americans, and over 300,000 in the past 16 years. [2] [3] [4]

Fentanyl is often combined with heroin or made to resemble other painkillers that grab a higher street price, often leading to the deaths of users who are unaware that the drug has been contaminated. [2]

At its annual meeting, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which is also the governing body of the Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), voted in favor of “scheduling” two fentanyl precursors and a fentanyl-like substance. In other words, these chemicals were added to an international control list, which should help ensure more stringent international monitoring of suspicious orders and transactions. This could make it harder for people get their hands on them and produce fentanyl. [1]

A U.S. State Department spokeswoman said in response to the decision:

“None of us lives under the illusion that this is a silver bullet to solving our opioid crisis. But this vote will make it harder for the criminals that are illicitly producing fentanyl to access the necessary resources. It will require countries to regulate the production, sale, and export of the precursors to fentanyl, and to criminalize sale or trafficking outside of those regulations.”

Read: FDA Takes Major Steps to Address Growing Opioid Crisis

The UNODC named the two precursors as 4-anilino-N-phenethylpiperidine (ANPP) and N-phenethyl-4-piperidone (NPP). The commission also added butyrfentanyl, a fentanyl analogue that is similar to the drug.

The State Department said in a statement:

“The U.S. mission [to the United Nations in Vienna] … welcomes this decision as a concrete example of how international action can have a clear benefit for the United States, as we face a crisis taking a tremendous toll on American communities.” [1]

Sources:

[1] VOA News

[2] ABC News

[3] CDC

[4] Vice

CDC

Heartland Health Region

Huffington Post (featured image source)

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About Julie Fidler:
	Julie Fidler is a freelance writer, legal blogger, and the author of Adventures in Holy Matrimony: For Better or the Absolute Worst. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two ridiculously spoiled cats. She occasionally pontificates on her blog.

Having Your Life Saved During an Overdose Now Punishable by 6 Months in Jail

Washington Court House, OH — As if struggling to beat opioid addiction weren’t challenging enough, being revived from an overdose in one Ohio town could now earn the victim criminal charges.

In February, Washington Court House Police Chief Brian Hottinger told NBC4, his department began citing anyone whom emergency services must revive using naloxone (name brand, Narcan) with inducing panic.

At least seven people have been charged with this first-degree misdemeanor since the change, and now must face a $1,000 fine and — alarmingly for those already battling addiction — up to six months in county jail.

Officials claim the switch occurred as the latest attempt to quash a widespread opioid epidemic gripping Ohio and the entire nation — but the situation has spiraled so far out of control, Washington Court House’s plan mostly seeks to track who has overdosed.

“It gives us the ability to keep an eye on them, to offer them assistance and to know who has overdosed,” City Attorney Mark Pitsick explained to ABC6. “Sometimes we can’t even track who has overdosed.”

Southwest Ohio and the surrounding region are experiencing, as other areas, the brunt of the heroin and opioid epidemic, leaving authorities scrambling to determine how to best help civilians and stem the supply.

“We are trying everything we can do. It’s an epidemic,” Pitsick asserted.

Hottinger and Pitsick insist charging overdose victims this way will allow officials to offer much-needed help to those whose habits have overtaken their lives — and stuffing people in cages isn’t the goal, but is one option of last resort.

Pitsick reiterated,

“Service. Follow up. Just them understanding that people do care. We are here to help. We are not here to put them in jail.

“They don’t have hope to begin with, but [by] helping them we hope we are giving them the ability to turn their lives around.”

Although the epidemic is far from unique to Washington Court House, the frustration expressed by overwhelmed officials isn’t; but the widespread, deadly issue has the simplest of solutions — if only beleaguered police departments and emergency medical providers would make their case to the federal government.

Several viable alternatives to jailing nonviolent drug offenders — particularly people addicted to opiates — have shown undeniable promise in curbing the epidemic.

Repealing cannabis prohibition — implemented and sustained for purely political reasons — could virtually solve America’s sordid obsession with heroin and painkillers. Weed not only fails to act as the ‘gateway’ drug U.S. government propaganda has warned us about for decades, but a recent study also found the extraordinary plant can reduce a user’s dependency on, among other things, opiates.

Indeed, decriminalization or legalization as has been attempted in a growing number of nations after Portugal experienced a decade of imperfect success in removing the criminality from all substances — including cannabis, cocaine, heroin, and any drug considered illicit.

Portugal’s prisons veritably emptied of nonviolent drug offenders, the overall violent crime rate slumped, adolescents no longer experiment with substances at the same rate as other Western nations, and — after a brief, expected spike in the revolutionary program’s nascence — the rate of drug use and dependence has lessened dramatically.

Were the U.S. to follow those cues, anyone dependent on opioids would be able to use psilocybin or LSD to break the drug’s chokehold — the government’s own data admits magic mushrooms and acid can reduce opioid dependence.

Of course, any of these options would steal profits from the pockets of pharmaceutical companies which wildly profit from legal drugs like Oxycontin, fentanyl, and more — in short, national decriminalization isn’t likely anytime soon, if ever.

One option working to fight the opioid epidemic that doesn’t require a seismic shift in federal drug policy originally hails from Gloucester, Massachusetts, where heartbroken, now-former Police Chief Leonard Campanello threw the ultimate Hail Mary in 2015.

Sick of the town’s string of deaths from heroin, the frustrated Campanello posted to social media that anyone suffering with drug addiction and dependence should come to the police station — with their remaining supply and needles — and rather than being charged or taken to jail, the department promised to help find an appropriate treatment facility.

To his delight, a number of people took the chief’s offer, even sending the desperate out of state when treatment better fit the individual elsewhere. The drastic switch in policy — and Campanello’s resultant Angel Program — were so efficacious in thwarting the epidemic, it has now been implemented by over 200 police departments around the United States.

Washington Court House officials closely echo Campanello’s helplessness in the face of the monster epidemic — but their plan to charge people as criminals after what must be the lowest point of dependence, overdose, misses the mark.

Our federal government has the power to stifle this problem and rein in opioid dependence — but its fealty to Big Pharma thus far has supplanted any semblance of reason, common sense, and, most of all, compassion.