High Expectations
KERI HOGAN WAS about to become a police officer when she submitted a sample of her hair to the city of Boston for testing. The city, in turn, gave it to a company called Psychemedics, which washed the hair, dissolved it, and used gas chromatography and mass spectrometry—chemical analysis techniques—to check it twice over for evidence of cocaine. Hogan’s hair tested positive.
Despite the alarming increase in US opioid overdoses, most of us would be hard pressed to describe exactly what happens in the body during one. Here's a step-by-step explainer.
If you have ever had surgery or told your doctor about physical pain, no doubt you have heard the question: “How would you rate your pain on a scale of zero to 10, with zero being no pain and 10 being the worst pain you can imagine?” That sounds like a reasonable question, but everyone has a different pain tolerance. In extreme cases, there are individuals who are born with no feeling of pain at all. Therefore, one patient’s two could be another patient’s nine, and both could be telling the truth. There are no other evidence-based findings for pain, especially for patients experiencing non-cancer pain syndrome. The pain scale is a useful tool, but it is certainly not ideal and is adding to the opioid addiction crisis running rampant in our country today.
As more states legalize medical and recreational marijuana, doctors may be replacing opioid prescriptions with suggestions to visit a local marijuana dispensary. Two papers published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine analyzing more than five years of Medicare Part D and Medicaid prescription data found that after states legalized weed, the number of opioid prescriptions and the daily dose of opioids went way down.
In a follow-up of the outbreak of severe bleeding due to the use of synthetic cannabinoids, Illinois health officials report an additional 18 cases and one death, bringing the outbreak total to 56 severe bleeding cases and two deaths since Mar. 7.
As more states legalize medical and recreational marijuana, doctors may be replacing opioid prescriptions with suggestions to visit a local marijuana dispensary. Two papers published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine analyzing more than five years of Medicare Part D and Medicaid prescription data found that after states legalized weed, the number of opioid prescriptions and the daily dose of opioids went way down.
The opioid epidemic ravaging the United States is taking a grim and growing toll.
The latest numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 64,070 people died from drug overdoses in 2016. That's a 21 percent increase over the year before. Approximately three-fourths of all drug overdose deaths are now caused by opioids — a class of drugs that includes prescription painkillers as well as heroin and potent synthetic versions like fentanyl.
A new report from Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), an independent research organization that focuses on "critical issues in policing," puts those numbers into context.
According to the report, more Americans died from drug overdoses in 2016 than the number of American lives lost in the entirety of the Vietnam War, which totaled 58,200.
I've been to A&E once. I was 17 and jumped into a bush after a night on the Reefs at Maidstone Jumpin Jaks. I punctured a hole in my shoulder and, despite my protestations, got carted to hospital by some friends who thought the whole experience was hilarious. I've still got a slug-like scar on my right shoulder and, the older I get, the less I enjoy telling the story of its genesis.
As A&E admissions go, it was pretty harmless, and I didn't worry about how people would perceive me afterwards. But what about those who get taken to A&E after taking drugs, with more serious problems than a bloody arm? With a 57 percent rise in drug-related hospital admissions over the last decade, it's a question worth asking. What's the experience like for these people? How did they get there? And how are they treated by the staff?
Science once again catching up with what many already knew – but this is progress: A new scientific study has investigated the toxicity of various drugs and found Marijuana the clear winner. It’s been found significantly less toxic than all the other substances on the list – including not only illegal drugs but the LEGAL alcohol and tobacco. Here’s our full report.
Every day, judges around the country are deciding the fate of criminal defendants by trying to strike the right balance between public safety and fairness.
In Philadelphia, the new progressive district attorney has launched an experiment. He's asking his prosecutors to raise another factor with judges: the cost of incarceration.
WASHINGTON — The White House’s national strategy to combat the opioid crisis, unveiled last week, would expand a particular kind of addiction treatment in federal criminal justice settings: a single drug, manufactured by a single company, with mixed views on the evidence regarding its use.
The marijuana legalization movement in America has made some amazing strides these past few years. More and more states are abandoning their crusade against an herb that makes people behave like snacky philosophy freshman. But unfortunately for those who wanted their legal weed to come with a mellow high, it turns out that marijuana legislation has some crappy side effects, such as...
