Posts

WATCH: Popular Toddler’s Show Tackles Opioid Crisis

/0 Comments/in , /by

The enduring children’s show Sesame Street is tackling the opioid crisis with a character whose mother is struggling with an addiction.

Sesame Workshop, which is behind the show, said the new initiative features Karli, a six-and-a-half year-old Sesame Street Muppet “whose mom is dealing with addiction.”

The organization didn’t specify the nature of the character’s health problems, saying only that the issue will be explored through an ongoing series of videos and other content. . .

Sesame Street first introduced Karli in May as the face of the Sesame Street in Communities foster care initiative. The new addiction storyline explains that Karli’s was placed in foster care because her mother had to go away for treatment, though now she’s in recovery.

The show said there are 5.7 million children under the age of 11 — one in eight children — who live in households with a parent who has a substance abuse disorder. It said one in three of these children will enter foster care due to parental addiction, a number that risen by more than 50% in the past decade. (Read more from “Popular Toddler’s Show Tackles Opioid Crisis” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

Melania Trump Visits Mothers, Newborn Victims of Opioid Crisis

/0 Comments/in , /by

First Lady Melania Trump attended a conference at the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital where she met with mothers and newborn babies who have been affected by the opioid crisis. She toured the Philadelphia hospital’s intensive care unit for newborns and visited with mothers who are in the medical facility’s treatment program, according to VOA News. Jefferson has been treating patients for drug use and overdose for the past 45 years.

Trump spoke to the attendees of the conference and thanked the hospital staff for all they are doing “for this very important issue” and discussed her own “Be Best” campaign in examining the effects the crisis has on children.

“I’m grateful to the medical professionals who have been taking the time to explain their research and their impressive efforts in this field,” she said. “There are few things harder than seeing a newborn suffer and I’m anxious to do all I can to help shine a light on this epidemic.” She also praised the Trump administration for raising awareness of this issue.

Mrs. Trump continued, “As the caretakers of the next generation, it is our responsibility to protect our most valuable and vulnerable: our children.”

The first lady was briefly delayed from attending the event when her plane was forced to return to Andrews Air Force after smoke began to fill the cabin. It was later discovered to be a mechanical problem. (Read more from “Melania Trump Visits Mothers, Newborn Victims of Opioid Crisis” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Politicians and the Media Are Punishing Your Doctor, Not Drug Traffickers, for Our Drug Crisis

/0 Comments/in , /by

On the so-called opioid crisis, the media and political class are continuing to treat a migraine by amputating a toe. We have plain but totally ignored evidence and data showing that the record fatalities from drugs are a national security-related many-drug crisis brought on by drug cartels, the surge in Central American immigration, and sanctuary cities, not prescription opioids.

Yesterday, the New York Times and other media outlets posted articles headlining the record 72,000 deaths from drugs in 2017, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). They immediately proceeded to make the issue all about addiction and health care and prescription opioids when, in fact, prescription deaths are down dramatically in most states and the entirety of the surge in deaths is from illicit drugs and poisonous substances laced into other drugs by cartels and drug traffickers, not doctors.

Meanwhile, Roll Call reports that red-state Democrats are trying to save their seats by passing more expensive drug-monitoring programs and more government involvement in health care. In fact, these are the very same politicians who have created and exacerbated the problem with open borders, sanctuary cities, weak immigration laws, and the dismantling of tough-on-crime policies.

There are two reasons why the political class cannot tell the truth about the nature and cause of the epidemic-level increase in fatalities since the border surge of 2014: It implicates their open-borders agenda, and it implicates their agenda to decriminalize drug trafficking as part of “criminal justice reform.” These are two sacred cows with the weight of the political and corporate universe behind them. It’s a lot easier to treat doctors like drug traffickers and stable, chronic pain patients like drug addicts than to address the real drug cartels. And to the extent that there is a health care problem, a lot of it is because of the Medicaid program creating a pipeline of diverted prescriptions on the streets. That is another political untouchable.

According to the preliminary 2017 data (still just an estimate), only 14,330 of the fatalities were from prescription opioids, which is fewer than the 16,800 in 2016 and in line with the long-standing trend. And as I’ve explored ad nauseum in this column, most of those deaths are due to mixing with illicit drugs, sleeping pills, or alcohol. In addition, there is strong evidence that a number of the fatalities listed on death certificates as morphine-related were really from heroin. In other words, pain patients or post-op patients who need painkillers and have no history of abuse or mental or emotional issues rarely overdose. Yet they are being harmed by government clamping down on prescriptions while ignoring the illicit drug trade.

In an article in the April issue of the American Journal of Public Health, CDC researchers admitted that previous government data inaccurately conflated prescription drug deaths with illicit street drug deaths. They conceded that although “opioid-involved deaths were at their greatest levels ever in 2016 … prescription opioid-involved deaths estimated more conservatively have leveled off since 2012.”

A look at the CDC’s state-by-state data, as well as other data I’ve compiled from more accurate state health agencies in the most affected states, reveals the following:

Fentanyl is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. It is directly responsible for the most fatalities and is responsible for many of the fatalities from other drugs because it is laced in by the cartels and distributors.

Heroin deaths have declined over last year, being supplanted by fentanyl, but are still at very high levels.

Cocaine and meth, which aren’t opiate-based, continue to be the fastest-growing problems. They are exclusively the result of increased Mexican drug cartel trafficking and MS-13 activity. Meth is mainly a problem in white parts of the country, while cocaine is ravaging predominantly black areas, such as Baltimore. Fentanyl is being laced into these drugs, which is making them even deadlier. The role of sanctuary cities as major hubs is unmistakable.

Alabama has the highest rate of prescriptions in the entire country! Yet the state has a low rate of prescription deaths, and it is getting lower. Heroin and fentanyl are the main problems but are finally peaking. And cocaine and meth are now surging. Yes, this is a Mexican drug cartel problem, not a problem with your doctor.

As another proof that this is a general cultural problem, there has been an uptick in fatalities from benzodiazepines, which are sleeping pills/anxiety drugs. Fentanyl is being laced into that supply as well. This has nothing to do with a prescription opioid addiction.

Even Canadian officials are now concerned that the vast network of Mexican drug cartels in America are creating a new Canadian fentanyl problem, yet our media refuses to recognize the Mexican cartels as the primary source of our own problem.

The Senate is now working on dozens of bills designed to spend more money, clamp down on doctors, and harm pain patients. But legislators refuse to recognize the border and sanctuary problem. Worse, they are working on convincing Trump to go weaker on drug traffickers. We’re not talking about your parents’ marijuana here.

Sen. Tom Cotton perfectly illustrated the insane hypocrisy of the political class on this issue:

As I observed earlier this week, a growing part of this problem is synthetic marijuana sold at Yemeni-owned convenient stores and mini-marts containing rat poison. Twenty youngsters dropped like flies in a Connecticut park yesterday after overdosing on a bad batch of synthetic marijuana. This is not a health care issue; it’s a cultural issue tied into a national security issue.

Several weeks ago, four people died and over 300 were sickened in the D.C. area as youngsters dropped in the streets like zany zombies from what is believed to be a poisoned batch of K2 synthetic marijuana. The CDC believes that 255 people have died the same way this year.

A sane country that believed this was a true emergency would:

Immediately build the wall

End the flow of Central Americans into the country

Ban all sanctuary cities

Raise, not lower, penalties for and prosecution of drug traffickers

Take military action against the cartels violating our sovereignty and poisoning our people

Instead, politicians did the exact opposite on those issues and then severely limited pain medication for those who never overdose. Cutting off legitimate pain medication while flooding our country with Mexican drug cartels and releasing drug traffickers from prison might be the most insane and toxic mix of policies the government has pursued in recent memory. At this point, the pendulum on prescription killers has swung too far the other way, the same way the pendulum on de-incarceration of drug traffickers has already swung too far.

This disgraceful amalgamation of government inanity – pursuing a witch hunt against doctors and coddling drug traffickers – will either exacerbate the growing suicide crisis or push more otherwise stable people into the street market of dangerous poisonous drugs, thanks to open borders and the war against prosecuting drug traffickers. The real opioid crisis is the ignorance of the politicians – a very expensive commodity indeed. (For more from the author of “Politicians and the Media Are Punishing Your Doctor, Not Drug Traffickers, for Our Drug Crisis” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Counterfeit Painkillers Cut with Deadly Opioids Are Spreading Death in U.S.

/0 Comments/in , /by

Counterfeit painkillers masked as prescription opioids are increasingly cropping up as a culprit in overdose deaths, according to a recent warning from Iowa’s law enforcement.

The fake prescription pills are often mixed with potentially fatal synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which is a painkiller roughly 30 to 50 times more powerful than pure heroin. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Iowa issued an advisory Thursday due to the increased threat a recent influx of counterfeit pills poses to residents, The Gazette reported.

Their advice to residents is to stay away from any pills not directly prescribed by a doctor. Officials want to raise awareness of the issue, so unsuspecting users are not deceived into taking a deadly pill.

“The opioid epidemic lowered American life expectancy in 2015 and 2016 for the first time in decades,” U.S. Attorney Peter Deegan Jr. said, according to The Gazette. “Heroin and prescription opioid abuse has taken a devastating toll on our community. But we have also seen a rise in the prevalence of counterfeit prescription pills being sold on the internet and on the street.”

Fentanyl continues to pour into the country across the border and through the mail from China. The substance is fueling more overdose deaths as drug dealers increasingly cut the substance into heroin, cocaine and pill supplies to maximize profits. (Read more from “Counterfeit Painkillers Cut with Deadly Opioids Are Spreading Death in U.S.” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Gov’t Move to Stop Opioid Abuse Backfires in Horrifying Way… Hell on Earth

/0 Comments/in , , /by

By Conservative Tribune. There has been much discussion in recent years about the crisis of opioid abuse, and while there is broad agreement that “something must be done,” there are innocent victims of a crackdown on opioid drugs that often go unnoticed.

According to the Cato Institute, those overlooked victims are hospitalized patients recovering from accidents or surgeries who are in serious pain, but are unable to receive necessary doses of powerful painkillers to ease their suffering.

Rather than being administered proper doses of opioid drugs, these patients are instead being treated with less effective drugs like acetaminophin, muscle relaxers and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, similar to what one could obtain over the counter at a local drug store.

In other words, while these people are wracked with excruciating pain and legitimately require the powerful opioid drugs to ease their pain, they are instead left suffering in a literal “hell on earth” due to government intrusion into the pharmaceutical market . . .

Making matters worse, the DEA’s cuts are fairly misguided, as the real problem of the “opioid crisis” isn’t the drugs themselves, but the results of an addiction to opioids. (Read more from “Gov’t Move to Stop Opioid Abuse Backfires in Horrifying Way… Hell on Earth” HERE)

______________________________________________________

Why Some Opioids Users Don’t Fear a Fatal Overdose

By U.S. News. A couple years ago, when local news agencies reported a spike in overdose deaths related to fentanyl in St. Paul, Minnesota, clinicians at an outpatient treatment clinic in that city saw an immediate effect.

“A dozen of our patients disappeared,” says Dr. Marvin Seppala, chief medical officer of the Minnesota-based Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. “They’d been in treatment from six weeks to two years and were sober.” The patients dropped out of the program to try fentanyl, a synthetic opiate painkiller that was new to the area. “Nobody in their right mind would want to get near fentanyl, which is 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine and up to 50 times stronger than heroin,” he says. “Our patients heard about fentanyl and thought, ‘I want to try that.’ They wanted to recapture the euphoric high they hadn’t felt since they’d started using.”

Luckily, Seppala says, none of these patients died during their relapses. Still, the anecdote helps explain why the deadly opioid epidemic is getting worse; the grim fact is that some people with opioid use disorder are drawn to substances they know might kill them – and not because they’re suicidal. The pull helps explain the growing death toll the opioid crisis is exacting. Every day, more than 115 people in the United States die of an opioid overdose, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. More than 64,000 people died of drug overdose in the U.S. in 2016, and the lion’s share of those fatalities – more than 42,000 – involved opioids, a record number, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Opioid overdoses in recent years have claimed the lives of acclaimed actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and the musicians Prince and Tom Petty. Opioids include heroin and prescription medications such as hyrdrocodone, oxycodone, oxymorphone, morphine, codeine and fentanyl. Lately, authorities have seen carfentanil – which is typically used to tranquilize elephants and other large animals – show up on the street. Carfentanil is about 100 times more potent than fentanyl and 10,000 times stronger than morphine, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The grim fact is that for many people with opioid use disorder, the lethality of a particular batch of drugs isn’t a deterrent – it’s an attraction, says Howard Samuels, chief executive officer of The Hills Treatment Center in Los Angeles. Samuels, 60, speaks from experience: He’s been in recovery from heroin addiction for more than 30 years.

“When I was on the streets of New York, when we heard a brand of heroin was causing people to overdose and killing them, we wanted that brand of heroin so badly,” Samuels says. “We thought the people who were dying didn’t know how to shoot it [properly]. I thought [overdosing] won’t happen to me.” This mindset is illogical, but it makes sense to someone struggling with substance use disorder, because denial is a hallmark of addiction, Samuels says. “It’s all about denial and rationalization,” he says. “I was shooting heroin and thought I was still in control. It was absolutely crazy.” (Read more from “Why Some Opioids Users Don’t Fear a Fatal Overdose” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.