Determining the true cause of the opioid crisis is crucial – is it prescription painkillers or street drugs? Congress should not be passing legislation to solve the wrong problem. There will be serious public health consequences for cracking down on the wrong type of drugs.
The conventional wisdom on the opioid crisis is that prescription drug dependency was a major factor behind the surge of addictions and overdoses. This belief was challenged by studies demonstrating that prescription drug problems from the 1990s and 2000s were fading before the current opioid crisis began, and the real problem today is with street drugs like heroin and fentanyl. New research highlights a very sharp dividing line between the earlier pill problem and today’s drug crisis: OxyContin was reformulated in 2010 to cut down on abuse, so addicts turned to heroin.
The early theory of the opioid crisis and the “White Death” was that over-reliance on prescription painkillers was a major factor in rising mortality rates. Americans were reporting more pain to doctors than ever before, and receiving more painkiller prescriptions as a result. New research and analysis challenge these assumptions by arguing that the opioid crisis flows largely from drugs like heroin and fentanyl, which exploded just as prescription drug use was beginning to decline, and one of the primary contributing factors was the migrant crisis President Barack Obama unleashed in his second term.
President Donald Trump says his administration will be rolling out a “very, very strong” policy on illegal drugs, including harsh penalties for drug distributors.
Former Fox News personality Eric Bolling warned parents about failing to discuss the dangers of opioids as he personally copes with the loss of his son, Chase, who died from an overdose last September at the age of 19.
The White House hosted a summit on the opioid epidemic in the United States that including members of the Trump administration, families, and stakeholders on Thursday.
New studies are challenging the widely accepted idea that prescription drug abuse and economic despair are driving the epidemic of opioid drug abuse.
The online sale from Chinese labs of the synthetic opioid fentanyl, the top driver behind the unprecedented overdose deaths in the United States deemed a top national security threat, reached nearly $800 million over two years, reveals a newly unveiled Senate investigation.
2017 was the year rising mortality rates for middle-aged whites in America came onto the public and government policy radar screen, two years after a landmark study from Princeton economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case first detected the statistical spike. The causes of the White Death are complex, but it seems clear that one of the important factors is the rise of drug addiction, particularly opioids – from prescription painkillers to heroin.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions created a new “senior position” at the Department of Justice Wednesday, director of opioid enforcement and prevention efforts, to help combat what is now far and away the deadliest drug epidemic in American history.
President Donald Trump donated his third quarter salary on Thursday to the Department of Health and Human Services, which will use the money to empower local partners and launch a campaign to battle the opioid epidemic in America.
Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon gave an address hosted by Citizen Power for China in Tokyo on Tuesday night, in which he talked about China’s aggressive agenda for the 21st Century and the working-class revolt against the elites in democratic societies around the world.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced on Monday that a state grand jury indicted eight individuals alleged to be involved in a northern Arizona opioid ring.
On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” CNN Commentator and former Obama adviser Van Jones argued President Trump doesn’t want to solve the opioid crisis and merely wants to “demagogue” about the issue. Jones said, “[T]his is one of the things that
A U.S. district court judge sentenced a Texas man to serve 20 years in federal prison for his role in a large-scale fentanyl distribution ring where he sold up to 10 grams a day of a designer version of the dangerous synthetic opioid.
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin discovered what they call a potentially powerful non-addictive painkiller that targets previously untapped receptors in the brain. Such a finding could offer a game-changing alternative for chronic pain sufferers dependent on dangerous prescription opioids.
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. David Shulkin appeared on Tuesday’s Breitbart News Daily to discuss reforms made at the V.A. on his watch, the challenges that still remain, the state of health care reform for the private sector, and the emotional Medal of Honor ceremony for Vietnam War Army medic James McCloughan.
A bill that would reduce drug felonies to misdemeanors for first-time possessions of small amounts of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and other hard drugs passed through the Oregon state legislature on Thursday and is likely to be signed into law by Governor Kate Brown.
United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Price announced the “largest health care fraud takedown operation in American history” on Thursday in which hundreds of individuals nationwide were indicted for their alleged roles in bilking U.S. taxpayers out of $1.3 billion by filing false Medicare claims. One in four of these cases involved opioid-related crimes.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) called on Secretary of State Jeff Sessions to leave “grandma’s medicinal marijuana” alone and argued against reversing progress on the legalization of the drug during her speech at the Center for American Progress’s 2017 “Ideas Conference” Tuesday.
