Bastrop Enterprise - A yearlong study offers rigorous new evidence against using prescription opioids for chronic pain.
In patients with stubborn back aches or hip or knee arthritis, opioids worked no better than over-the-counter drugs or other nonopioids at reducing problems with walking or sleeping. And they provided slightly less pain relief.
Bastrop Enterprise - Emergency rooms saw a big jump in overdoses from opioids last year the latest evidence the nation’s drug crisis is getting worse.
A government report released Tuesday shows overdoses from opioids increased 30 percent late last summer, compared to the same three-month period in 2016.
Bastrop Enterprise - The head of the Food and Drug Administration wants to more than double the number of packages his agency inspects for illicit drugs, an effort to stem a deadly flow of opioids that increasingly runs through the international mail supply.
Bastrop Enterprise - Opioid poisonings and overdoses are sending increasing numbers of U.S. children and teens to the hospital, according to a study showing a substantial rise in young patients needing critical care.
The study included accidental poisonings along with overdoses from intentional use. Prescription painkillers were most commonly involved, but heroin, methadone and other opioid drugs also were used.
Hospitalizations were most common among kids aged 12-17 and those aged 1 to 5.
Bossier Press - U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, has introduced the Protection from Overprescribing Act to provide authorities the information they need to identify and prevent cases of opioid overprescription.
“In Louisiana, there is about one opioid prescription for every person. I and other physicians took an oath to first, do no harm. Some doctors are selling these prescriptions for profit. This is doing harm and it must be stopped,” Cassidy said. “This legislation gives law enforcement the information they need to identify bad actors and reduce the number of opioids on our streets.”
WWL - Americans are becoming more self-destructive.
While it's no surprise that some people drink themselves to death, get hooked on lethal drugs or end their own lives, the rate of such behavior is increasing dramatically, according to a new report from the Trust for America's Health and the Well Being Trust, both policy and advocacy non-profits.
And while rates of drug abuse and suicide among whites have long outnumbered minorities, the gap is closing fast.
Death rates from alcohol, drugs or suicide grew by 11% overall between 2015 and 2016, with drug-related deaths among blacks jumping 39%, the report found.
WVUE - Family physicians, nurse practitioners and doctors whose health care focuses on non-narcotic therapies are some of the nation’s most prolific opioid prescription writers in recent years.
Bossier Press-Tribune - Edwards and Attorney General Jeff Landry have agreed to coordinate efforts in the State of Louisiana’s litigation against opioid manufacturers.
Under this agreement, announced today, the Attorney General’s office will take over primary responsibility for the suit filed by the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) in the 19th Judicial District Court. Furthermore, the Attorney General’s office will lead the efforts with other state agencies and departments to pursue all claims Louisiana has as a result of the opioid crisis.
Bastrop Daily Enterprise - Marine veteran Jeff Harris was among the first to sign up when the Providence VA hospital started offering acupuncture for chronic pain.
“I don’t like taking pain medication. I don’t like the way it makes me feel,” he said.
Harris also didn’t want to risk getting addicted to heavy-duty prescription painkillers.
Although long derided as pseudoscience and still questioned by many medical experts, acupuncture is increasingly being embraced by patients and doctors, sometimes as an alternative to the powerful painkillers behind the nation’s opioid crisis.
KALB - The Alexandria Police Department addresses the ongoing problem of heroin and synthetic opioids in our community: In March of 2016, APD investigated the death of a young man who had taken fentanyl-laced heroin. He quickly lost consciousness and emergency personnel responded, but were unable to revive him. In February of 2017, a young woman took what she thought was heroin—but it had been laced with fentanyl—and the same fate befell her.
WNYW - A FOX 11 investigation is taking you into the world of "xans" and "bars", counterfeit Xanax pills taken by young adults which could be laced with the extremely deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl.
"Imagine three to five grains of table salt, that's the potential fatal dose for an adult," said Marlon Whitfield of the Drug Enforcement Agency's Los Angeles division. "If you take one of these pills, there's a chance you may die.
Bastrop Daily Enterprise - The maker of the powerful painkiller OxyContin said it will stop marketing opioid drugs to doctors, bowing to a key demand of lawsuits that blame the company for helping trigger the current drug abuse epidemic.
OxyContin has long been the world’s top-selling opioid painkiller, bringing in billions in sales for privately-held Purdue, which also sells a newer and longer-lasting opioid drug called Hysingla.
The company announced its surprise reversal on Saturday. Purdue’s statement said it eliminated more than half its sales staff this week and will no longer send sales representatives to doctors’ offices to discuss opioid drugs. Its remaining sales staff of about 200 will focus on other medications.
Shreveport Times - An event aimed at starting a community dialogue on the opioid epidemic and how it is affecting residents in the Shreveport-Bossier City area was hosted by The Community Foundation and the Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse (CADA) on Wednesday.
WVLA - According to the Centers for Disease Control, drug overdose has become the leading cause of death for Americans under 50 and the majority of drug overdose deaths (66 percent) involve an opioid.
It’s an epidemic that’s not only sweeping the nation, but hitting close to home for many Baton Rouge families.
“We are having people dying in large numbers,” Jan Laughinghouse with Capital Area Human Services said. “It is tearing apart families and the fabric of our community as a whole.”
Bastrop Daily Enterprise - The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday intensified its warnings about kratom, saying new research provides strong evidence that the unregulated botanical substance has “opioid properties” and is associated with 44 deaths.
“We feel confident in calling compounds found in kratom, opioids,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement. The agency’s conclusion is based on recent computational modeling and on scientific literature and reports of adverse effects in people, he said. The new data, he added, reinforced agency concerns about kratom’s “potential for abuse, addiction and serious health consequences, including death.”
Daily Advertiser - When a classmate died of a drug overdose, Symmes Culbertson bought a black suit for the funeral.
“It didn’t feel right to wear a blue sports jacket,” the 23-year-old political science major said.
What he didn’t count on was how many more funerals of classmates he would attend — six since he began attending Louisiana State University in 2013. “The number of people that I have known by name or in passing that have died from prescription drug overdoses, just in my college years, is well into the teens,” Culbertson said.
These kinds of events have become increasingly common at U.S. colleges, where many students view mixing pills and chasing them with alcohol as a rite of passage, rather than a dangerous and often deadly practice.
American Press - Opioid addiction in Louisiana continues to be a major problem, even though the prescribing rate for the drug by the end of 2016 had declined almost 11 percent since 2007. Only four other states had a higher prescription rate than Louisiana's 98.1 opioid prescriptions distributed per 100 people in 2016.
The national rate is 66.5 per 100 people. The four states with higher rates than Louisiana are Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee.
Numerous efforts are underway to combat the opioid epidemic, and indications are they are working. Those efforts include prescription limits for Medicaid patients and increasing use of naloxone, an antidote medication that can reverse the effects of opioids.
KARD - The opioid epidemic is a significant public health issue that has swarmed the nation.
Lynn Kari has suffered from a harrowing accident that left her without two major parts of her body. “Mine were literally ripped off my body in an accident. Whether it was surgical, whether it was a clean cut, or not; the bone actually feels that pain and that was probably the worst part of the pain.”
As a result Kari was given a prescription of several different types of opioids. However, she didn’t want them to take over her life. “I did not want to become addicted to it. The pain that I was experiencing was enough for me to be prescribed as much opioids as I wanted,” she said.
Shreveport Times - Dr. Daniel Clauw hasn't newly prescribed opioids for chronic pain treatment in almost 20 years. They don't work, says the director of the University of Michigan's Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center.
Clauw decided long ago that prescribing opioids for chronic pain conditions, notably fibromyalgia, wasn't the way to go. Many other doctors differed.
He’s far less alone today. With opioid addiction and the resulting overdose deaths now a recognized epidemic, more doctors are signing on to his approach or, at least, are prescribing opioid painkillers with more care.
WWL - A list of the programs and substance abuse addiction services mentioned in the Eyewitness News special.