Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Black Market For Opioid Addiction Medication Thriving Because Treatment Is So Hard To Get, Experts Say
NPR: Heroin And Opioid Users Hoping To Quit Turn To Black Market For Suboxone
Months in prison didn't rid Daryl of his addiction to opioids. "Before I left the parking lot of the prison, I was shooting up, getting high," he says. Daryl has used heroin and prescription painkillers for more than a decade. Almost four years ago he became one of more than 200 people who tested positive for HIV in a historic outbreak in Scott County, Ind. After that diagnosis, he says, he went on a bender. (Harper, 10/5)
The New York Times: Life On The Dirtiest Block In San Francisco
The heroin needles, the pile of excrement between parked cars, the yellow soup oozing out of a large plastic bag by the curb and the stained, faux Persian carpet dumped on the corner. It’s a scene of detritus that might bring to mind any variety of developing-world squalor. But this is San Francisco, the capital of the nation’s technology industry, where a single span of Hyde street hosts an open-air narcotics market by day and at night is occupied by the unsheltered and drug-addled slumped on the sidewalk. (Fuller, 10/8)
The Baltimore Sun: How To Get Naloxone, The Antidote For An Opioid Overdose, In Maryland
As the opioid epidemic continues to generate staggering numbers of fatalities, Marylanders might consider whether to stock up on an antidote to overdoses that’s called naloxone. The medication comes in the form of a nasal spray, called Narcan, or an injection, called Evzio. The FDA-approved prescription medications can counteract the life-threatening effects of an opioid-related overdose. (Reed, 10/5)
