BOSTON UNIVERSITY STATEHOUSE PROGRAM STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS in Massachusetts will receive $525 million to combat opioid abuse as part of a settlement with four of the nation’s largest drug distributors. The funds represent the Massachusetts share of a $26 billion settlement with drug distributors McKesson, Cardinal, AmerisourceBergen, and Johnson & Johnson. Of the total, […]
Opioid Overdoses
Posted inDrug Addiction
Opioid overdose deaths rise during pandemic
DEATHS FROM OPIOID OVERDOSES increased in Massachusetts during the pandemic, after three years of a steady decline. The rise in deaths is an alarming sign and one that experts say is likely indicative of the harmful impacts the pandemic is having on people with substance use disorder. “The way we looked at it is we had […]
Posted inDrug Addiction, Politics, State House News Service
Pot campaign bashed for appeal
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE A FUNDRAISING APPEAL from the marijuana legalization campaign has drawn the ire of health care professionals and parents of children who died from opioid addiction after the group pitched legal marijuana as an alternative to prescription pain drugs in spite of the state’s medical marijuana program. Will Luzier, the campaign manager […]
Posted inDrug Addiction, The Download
Death moves into the neighborhood
Drug abuse has come out of the shadows. No longer is it just the junkie in the back alley that gets our sympathy but little else for treatment. It’s now in Middle America’s backyards and bedrooms and it’s forcing everyone – politicians and policymakers – to confront the issue head-on. The most recent eye-opener, though it shouldn’t […]
Posted inHealth Care, The Download
There’s no such thing as an old junkie
There was a public service ad that ran in the United Kingdom a few years back that depicted elderly men and women using drugs in various forms – cooking up heroin in a spoon, shooting themselves and each other up, smoking crack in an aluminum foil pipe, snorting lines, and nodding off. The kicker to the […]