In the News

  • thehill.com: More than half think painkillers a major problem, but not a national emergency: report

    Posted 1/5/2018

    A little over half the country considers prescription painkiller addiction a major problem for the nation, but say it doesn't rise to the level of national emergency, a new report in the New England Journal of Medicine notes.

  • thehill.com: The best way to battle addiction is to put more resources into prevention

    Posted 1/5/2018

    The best way to battle addiction is to put more resources into prevention © Smartstock/iStock/Thinkstock Photos The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics just released some sobering news: Life expectancy in the United States dropped for the second year in a row due in large part to the 21 percent rise in drug overdose deaths to a whopping 63,600. That’s a staggering number that equates to 174 deaths everyday, just short of the number of casualties on 9/11 every two weeks.

  • qz.com: The opioid crisis is driving up deaths of millennials in the US

    Posted 1/5/2018

    The US is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. It’s the world’s center of innovation and medical science, yet the country can’t keep their youth from dying. US millennials are now dying at such high rates that it’s driven life expectancy in the country to decline for two years in a row, the first time that’s happened since the early 1960s. The primary cause for the trend is the opioid crisis.

  • cnn.com: Opioids now kill more people than breast cancer

    Posted 1/3/2018

    (CNN)More than 63,600 lives were lost to drug overdose in 2016, the most lethal year yet of the drug overdose epidemic, according to a new report from the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  • njherald.com: Feds employ data-driven early warning system in opioid fight

    Posted 1/3/2018

    Authorities have been going after so-called "pill mills" for years, but the new approach brings additional federal resources to bear against the escalating epidemic. Where prosecutors would spend months or longer building a case by relying on erratic informants and only limited data, the number-crunching by analysts in Washington provides information they say lets them quickly zero in on a region's top opioid prescribers.

  • statnews.com: The statistics don’t capture the opioid epidemic’s impact on children

    Posted 1/3/2018

    The epidemic of drug overdose deaths is a national disaster. It claimed more than 64,000 lives in 2016, many of them by opioid overdoses. That’s far more than the number of deaths from HIV/AIDS in the peak year of 1995.

  • insidescience.org: On the Front Lines of the Opioid Epidemic

    Posted 1/3/2018

    A 12-year study of more than 1,000 people at one Boston hospital suggests a new way to alert emergency room doctors of underlying addiction.

  • njtvonline.org: Christie announces $35 million to fight opioid crisis

    Posted 1/3/2018

    Continuing his commitment to fight the opioid crisis in New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie Tuesday announced the state has awarded more than $35 million to provide intensive services to those with severe opioid use disorders, and pregnant and postpartum mothers and older adults with opioid painkiller dependencies.

  • Wave of addiction linked to fentanyl worsens as drugs, distribution, evolve

    Posted 12/22/2017

    NASHUA, N.H. — Michelle MacLeod died in a tough part of town known as the Tree Streets, where many of the streets have names like Ash, Palm, Chestnut and Walnut. Kevin Manchester, who provided the fentanyl that killed her, lived on Pine.

  • washingtonpost.com: 56 miles from Temptation

    Posted 12/21/2017

    To save their marriage, a couple living at the crossroads of pain and addiction in rural Kentucky make a desperate escape.