Addiction Recovery Bulletin
July 21, 2021 – U.S. Customs and Border Protections (CBP) officers at the Chicago International Mail Branch (IMF) have seen a lot of prescription pills come through the mail – while some are legal, many are not. From January 1 to June 30, officers have seized 14,021 unapproved prescriptions
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Addiction Recovery Bulletin
July 13, 2021 – Opioid misuse and overdoses are a major problem in the United States. One factor that may be leading to the rate of heroin dependence is the growing population of youth with a history of nonmedical use of prescription opioids. However, there is a paucity in research examining the association between the prospective use of medical and nonmedical opioid misuse during adolescence, and future heroin use in adulthood.
This quantitative study analyzed self-reported responses about drug use from 11,012 adolescents over 17 years in the national Monitoring the Future study. Adolescents in 12thgrade from 25 cohorts spanning 1976-2000 who provided at least 1 wave of follow-up data (at the age of 30 and/or 35) were included. Participants were divided into five different categories based on opioid usage at the age of 18: 1) no lifetime exposure (control group); 2) medical prescription use; 3) medical use followed by nonmedical misuse; 4) nonmedical misuse followed by medical use; 5) nonmedical misuse only. Participants who reported lifetime heroin use at 18 were excluded. Primary outcome assessed for any heroin use through age 35.
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Addiction Recovery Bulletin
July 13, 2021 – The results, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, provide insights that policymakers and medical providers can act on to improve access to quality care for opioid use disorder, one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. The analysis was possible because of the Medicaid Outcomes Distributed Research Network, a unique network that partners academic institutions — including Virginia Commonwealth University — with state Medicaid programs to overcome barriers to data-sharing between states.
In its analysis published in JAMA — compiled by using standardized data from 11 states, including Virginia — the MODRN team found that Black enrollees were considerably less likely than white enrollees to be treated with medications for their opioid use disorder and were less likely to have continuity of such treatment. In contrast, pregnant women with opioid use disorder were far more likely than the average person with opioid use disorder to receive continuous medication-assisted treatment. This is likely because the women were actively engaged in care due to their pregnancy and motivated to continue treatment.
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Addiction Recovery Bulletin
July 16, 2021 –
Lifestyle leading to ‘death or penitentiary’
At home growing up, it was just Asher and his dad, who was addicted to drugs — his mother and brother lived out of state and weren’t in the picture. By the time he was a teenager, Asher found himself falling into the same habits as his father.
Asher married and had two children, a girl and a boy, but his addictions persisted, driving a wedge between him and his family. He separated from his wife, and for a span of four or five years, Asher said he “made it a point” not to visit his children. He didn’t want them to see him in the throes of addiction.
“I was never their dad,” Asher said. “I brought them into the world and essentially abandoned them.”
He started dealing meth as a way to stay high and get his drugs for free, Asher said. He felt like he had already lost his wife, children and parents, and there was nothing left to fight for, he said. Eventually, though, that lifestyle got old. When he was 41, he got caught selling drugs to an undercover cop.
“I used to say ‘I wish there was a way out,’ “ Asher said. “Well, I got my way out: I went to prison. I ran with it and never looked back.”
He was sentenced to 10 years, four of which would be probation. But less than a year after his sentencing, Asher petitioned for the remainder of his time to be served as probation. To his surprise, Asher said the judge granted his request.
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Addiction Recovery Bulletin
July 15, 2021- A Palm Beach County drug testing lab and 10 South Florida treatment centers worked together to fraudulently bill more than $141 million in unwarranted urine testing of drug addicts, Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said Tuesday. Aronberg said 15 people have been arrested in Florida, increasing the total number of arrests by the county’s Sober Homes Task Force to 85 since 2016. The task force coordinated its work with law enforcement in Pennsylvania, where 20 people have been arrested in connection with the scheme. Aronberg said it’s all part of the task force’s efforts to end the “Florida shuffle” that lures drug addicts to the Sunshine State with the promise of recovery but often ends up leaving them on the street when their insurance runs out. “The Florida shuffle doesn’t end at the Florida border, and certainly not at the Palm Beach County border,” he said at an afternoon news conference. “Today sends a message that labs that engage in kickback schemes will not be able to hide behind corporate walls to conceal unlawful activity.” Palm Beach County officials have unleashed a stampede of lawyers, health officials, police and rehab specialists to tackle the opioid epidemic that kills hundreds a year in Palm Beach County alone.
Owners of rogue sober homes have been arrested. Narcan, the nasal spray that halts an overdose, became widely used on patients by rescuers, and now can be purchased over the counter. And cities began hiring staff to work with people hooked on drugs, including Delray Beach, where the police department has its own social worker dedicated to the homeless and the addicted. Contributing to the quantity and intensity of overdoses was the increased usage of fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller 100 times more potent than morphine, and carfentanil, 10,000 times stronger than morphine.
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Addiction Recovery Bulletin
July 15th, 2021 – Experts told The 19th that the numbers underscore the need to not only assist women’s needs inside the jails, but to also implement systemic reforms, services and programs that can reduce their arrests.
“I think as long as we refuse to put money into those places that we know can help people, there will continue to be people with some really acute needs. We’re going to keep wanting to put them somewhere, and the place that we put them will be jail, and some of them will die there,” said Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank. The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) currently offers the most comprehensive national data on jail mortality, but provides a limited picture of the challenges facing women and no information on the death rates among nonbinary people. This spring, BJS released its most recent data from 2018, showing that women had a higher jail mortality rate than men for just the second time since the bureau began issuing these reports in 2000.
The rate in jails is a stark contrast to that of state prisons, where men were more likely to die in 2018, at a rate of 356 per 100,000 state prisoners, compared with 203 out of every 100,000 for women. One factor is that prisons, which hold incarcerated people for longer terms, can have resources that jails may not offer since they are considered a more temporary setting.
While women comprised 16.1 percent of all jail deaths in 2018, that has increased from 10 percent in 2000. As with Sandra Bland, the majority of jail deaths occurred among people who had not been convicted of a crime, and about 40 percent in 2018 happened within the first seven days of admission, though the BJS report does not break out this information specifically for women. The report also does not give data for specific groups such as Black women.
Illnesses, including heart disease, cancer and respiratory infections, collectively killed women at the highest rate, followed by suicide and problems related to drugs and alcohol. The concentration of deaths in these areas reflects the needs women have both in and out of incarceration.
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Addiction Recovery Bulletin
July 16, 2021 – The campaign is designed to empower individuals impacted by addiction to use their connections to friends, family members, health professionals, and other organizations, to find help and support in their treatment and recovery. Part of the funding to support the campaign was awarded to New York State through the federal State Opioid Response grant.
“This extraordinarily difficult past year has taught us the importance of staying in touch with loved ones, friends and neighbors,” Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul remarked. “The new ‘Connections’ campaign not only helps get the word out on lifesaving resources and services for New Yorkers who are battling addiction and substance use disorder, but is also a reminder that help is available to find a better and satisfying life,” Hochul explained.
“While the COVID-19 pandemic was difficult in so many ways, it undoubtedly had a profound impact on how we interacted with our normal social support systems thereby creating debilitating isolation and disconnection from much-needed resources and the people we love and associate with,” OASAS Commissioner Arlene González-Sánchez said.
“With this campaign, we want to encourage New Yorkers to uplift themselves and reclaim the power lost during this difficult time, and also to remind them that help is available to achieve a healthy life in sustained recovery from addiction,” González-Sánchez added.
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Addiction Recovery Bulletin
July 13, 2021 – President and CEO of Nashville Recovery Center, Ryan Cain added, “Since 2019 the Nashville Recovery Center has helped over 25,000 people step out of addiction and into recovery. Partnering with BRC Healthcare will allow us to reach and help even more people, and we know the positive ripple effect that sobriety will have on them, their families, and our communities.”
Rothermel added, “The April 2020 investment by Veronis Suhler Stevenson and NewSpring Health Capital is helping us rapidly expand, but we aren’t a company that believes in growth for growth’s sake. We believe in growing to meet unfilled needs, and the need for addiction treatment services has never been greater. We expect to announce our expansion into two additional states before the end of the year.”
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Addiction Recovery Bulletin
July 15, 2021 – On March 11, 2020, though, Suzanne grew worried. Jameson, 30 at the time, was slipping in and out of consciousness and saying he couldn’t move his hands.
By 11 p.m., she decided to take him to the emergency room at McLeod Regional Medical Center in Florence, South Carolina. The staff there gave Jameson fluids through an IV to rehydrate, medication to decrease his nausea and potassium supplements to stop his muscle spasms, according to Suzanne and a letter the hospital’s administrator later sent her.
But when they recommended admitting him to monitor and manage the withdrawal symptoms, Jameson said no. He’d lost his job the previous month and, with it, his health insurance.
“He kept saying, ‘I can’t afford this,’” Suzanne recalled, and “not one person [at the hospital] indicated that my son would have had some financial options.”
Suzanne doesn’t remember any mention of the hospital’s financial assistance policy or payment plans, she said. Nor does she remember any discussions of providing Jameson medication to treat opioid use disorder or connecting him to addiction-specialty providers, she said.
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Addiction Recovery Bulletin
July 13, 2021 – Two Southern California call centers that facilitated illegal drug deliveries distributed at least $2 million worth of heroin before a federal grand jury indicted 19 people in connection with the scheme. The 13-count federal indictment charges the defendants with offenses tied to narcotics and money laundering. Twelve of them are in custody and expected to be arraigned in federal court in Santa Ana on Tuesday; it was not immediately clear if they had attorneys who could speak on their behalf. The remaining seven are being sought. They face charges that range from life in prison to 10 years incarcerated.
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