Synthetic Painkiller Fentanyl Is The Latest Wave In Drug Epidemic
The drug, which can be 50 times more powerful than heroin and up to 100 times more potent than morphine, is causing, in some places, more deaths than heroin. “For the cartels, it’s their drug of choice,” says Maura Healey, the attorney general of Massachusetts. “They have figured out a way to make fentanyl more cheaply and easily than heroin and are manufacturing it at a record pace.”
The New York Times:
Heroin Epidemic Is Yielding To A Deadlier Cousin: Fentanyl
When Eddie Frasca was shooting up heroin, he occasionally sought out its more potent, lethal cousin, fentanyl. “It was like playing Russian roulette, but I didn’t care,” said Mr. Frasca, 30, a carpenter and barber who said he had been clean for four months. When he heard that someone had overdosed or even died from fentanyl, he would hunt down that batch. “I’d say to myself, ‘I’m going to spend the least amount of money and get the best kind of high I can,’ ” he said. Fentanyl, which looks like heroin, is a powerful synthetic painkiller that has been laced into heroin but is increasingly being sold by itself — often without the user’s knowledge. (Seelye, 3/25)
Meanwhile, Kaiser Health News and Stateline report on how the epidemic is affecting expecting mothers and their babies —
Kaiser Health News:
Tiny Opioid Patients Need Help Easing Into Life
Swaddled in soft hospital blankets, Lexi is 2 weeks old and weighs 6 pounds. She's been at Women and Infants Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island since she was born, and is experiencing symptoms of opioid withdrawal. Her mother took methadone to wean herself from heroin when she got pregnant, just as doctors advised. But now the hospital team has to wean newborn Lexi from the methadone. As rates of opioid addiction have climbed in the U.S., the number of babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome has increased, too — by five-fold from 2000 to 2012, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse. (Gourlay. 3/28)
Stateline:
Demand Surges For Addiction Treatment During Pregnancy
Nationwide, the number of pregnant women using heroin, prescription opioids or medications used to treat opioid addiction has increased more than five-fold and it’s expected to keep rising. With increased opioid and heroin use, the number of babies born with severe opioid withdrawal symptoms has also spiraled, leaving hospitals scrambling to find better ways to care for the burgeoning population of mothers and newborns. Among the most important principles is that expectant mothers who are addicts should not try to quit cold turkey because doing so could cause a miscarriage. Trying to quit opioids without the help of medications also presents a high risk of relapse and fatal overdose. (Vestal, 3/25)
And in other news about the opioid crisis —
The Associated Press:
Federal Officials, Advocates Push Pill-Tracking Databases
The nation's top health officials are stepping up calls to require doctors to log in to pill-tracking databases before prescribing painkillers and other high-risk drugs. The move is part of a multi-pronged strategy by the Obama administration to tame an epidemic of abuse and death tied to opioid painkillers like Vicodin and OxyContin. But physician groups see a requirement to check databases before prescribing popular drugs for pain, anxiety and other ailments as being overly burdensome. (Perrone, 3/28)
The Boston Globe:
Mass. Hospital Visits For Opioid Abuse Soar
The epidemic of opioid abuse in Massachusetts is often measured in deaths, such as the 1,099 people who succumbed to overdoses last year. But most people who are addicted don’t die. Instead, by the thousands, they wind up in hospitals. A newly released analysis by a health commission shows that opioid-related hospital visits in the state nearly doubled from 2007 to 2014. (Freyer, 3/28)
The Associated Press:
New York's Stringent Paperless-Prescribing Law Takes Effect
New York is putting an end to most paper prescriptions for medicine as the nation's toughest electronic-prescribing law takes effect. As of Sunday, doctors, dentists and other health care professionals must electronically send prescriptions directly to pharmacies, instead of giving paper scripts to patients. There are exceptions for emergencies and unusual circumstances, and thousands of prescribers have gotten extensions. (3/27)
The Associated Press:
Needle Exchange Debate Raises Prosecution Questions
As New Hampshire lawmakers decide whether to allow needle exchange programs, some of the biggest debate has been over how to handle the smallest amounts of drugs. Under current law, hypodermic needles and syringes can be dispensed only by pharmacists, and possessing a syringe containing any amount of heroin or other controlled drug is a felony. But faced with the state's growing drug crisis, the Legislature is considering a bill that would both clear the way for programs that allow drug users to swap dirty syringes for clean ones and would decriminalize residual amounts of drugs in syringes. It passed the House on Wednesday and now heads to the state Senate. (Ramer, 3/26)
The Associated Press:
Indiana Counties Must Fund Needle Exchanges Sans State Help
One of Indiana's four legal needle exchange programs operates out of a cramped 10 foot-by-10 foot office in the basement of the local courthouse in Fayette County, which is struggling with a hepatitis C outbreak amid the state's growing opioid-abuse crisis. Though just seven intravenous drug users addicted to heroin are enrolled in the program, Paula Maupin, Fayette County's public health nurse, expects that to grow to 75 to 100 participants in the next year or so. The problem is, lawmakers banned state funding for the exchanges when they legalized them last year, even as Indiana's worst-ever HIV outbreak struck in another county. (Callahan, 3/27)
