Author: The Fix

Bam Margera Sent To Hospital Because Of Bipolar Meds

Margera took to Instagram to clarify the reasons behind his hospital visits.

Former Jackass star Bam Margera was reportedly hospitalized twice in one week after a fall that he says was caused by side effects from a new medication for his bipolar disorder.

According to the reality star, he was sleepwalking when he fell and hit his head, resulting in a laceration that required six staples.

According to unCrazed, he suffered a kick to the wound while playing in the pool with his son, sending him back to the hospital. “I got karate kicked in a pool in the neck surgery playing with Phoenix with community kids by accident,” he said.

Margera was unable to remember the name of the medication he was given, saying that it “starts with a Z” in an Instagram video he made to dispel rumors that his trips to the hospital meant that he was once again using drugs.

“I am in treatment in Huntington Beach,” he explained. “I’ve been in treatment for a long, long time, and I’m gonna be here for a longer, longer time. And I’m gonna miss all of autumn in Pennsylvania.”

In & Out Of Treatment

Margera has been in and out of rehab for most of 2019, most recently agreeing to enter treatment after an intervention staged by his wife and talk show host Dr. Phil. He appeared to have left the rehab facility and may have been intoxicated in a video taken in August that showed the troubled celebrity refusing to leave a hotel lobby after allegedly harassing bar patrons, claiming someone had paid him to catch one of them cheating.

After the police were called, Margera was arrested and taken back to the rehab facility, where he was allowed to return after agreeing to commit to the program.

He appears to have stayed out of trouble since then. He was in the news in September, but only for an appearance on Dr. Phil in which he opened up about his mental health and credited his son, Phoenix, for keeping him from ending his life.

Baring All To Dr. Phil

“I had such a mental breakdown that I really thought like I… could just go to the lake and be free,” he said. “I was like the pain was gone and I had to beg for pain back. I was like, ‘Please just give me back my pain so I could stay because I want to be with him.’”

Phoenix turns two in December, and Bam has only good things to say about him.

“He is the raddest kid ever,” he told Dr. Phil. “He’s so interested in skateboarding. I have all these toys everywhere and he just goes right to the skateboard. He’s like my best friend and I’ve known him for not even two years.”

View the original article at thefix.com

3 October 2019
Nikki Sixx Pens New Song About Addiction Stigma, Opioid Abuse

The song is part of the National Opioid Action Coalition’s campaign to end the stigma surrounding addiction.

Motley Crue founder Nikki Sixx has a well-storied history of addiction and recovery, and with his current band, Sixx:A.M., he’s composed a new song, “Talk To Me,” which deals with opioids and the stigma surrounding addiction.

Earlier this year, Sixx tweeted, “We are very proud of something we just wrote/recorded. It will be part of a campaign helping in the fight against the opioid epidemic worldwide.”

Ending Stigma

As Blabbermouth reports, the song is named after a hashtag, #TalktoMe, launched by the National Opioid Action Coalition, which is hoping to eventually eliminate the stigma surrounding addiction.

As Sixx tweeted, “#TalktoMe is a movement by National Opioid Coalition to use the power of conversation to overcome stigma plaguing opioid use disorder. Join us in conversation.”

Sixx, the chief lyricist of Motley Crue and SixxA.M., wrote in one verse, “Look at your hands as you’re dripping those pills. You dance with the stigma, then wake up in chills. You’re not alone. Not alone. Don’t be afraid to survive. You know you can. Talk to me. I’ll be right by your side.”

Sixx Moderated A Conversation About The Opioid Crisis

In addition to releasing the song, Sixx also moderated a panel organized by Advertising Week, where influencers, government and global business executives have talked openly about what can be done about the opioid crisis, and the stigma surrounding it.

Having struggled with addiction throughout his life, Sixx has been outspoken about the opioid crisis. Last month, he told MSNBC, “People are talking about it, and they’re not hiding in the shadows anymore. Addiction is horrible, but suffering in silence is even worse. [Awareness] is the number one thing.”

Sixx has been especially worried about how easily people can access opioids through prescriptions and unethical doctors.

“It’s the prescription thing that’s really severely scary to me,” he said. “It’s the scariest. I had to go to the street to get it. We were just partying, and then it turned into addiction. But now the kids are just talking, just carrying in their pocket. It is a pill. You can wrap it up in a tissue, stick in their backpack and no one knows. It’s not like a syringe…So there’s a lot of opportunity for really horrible things to happen in secret. A lot of the young kids are getting into it and they’re trading it in the schoolyard.”

View the original article at thefix.com

3 October 2019
Social Media Algorithms as Triggers: Wish-ing for a Meth Pipe

Imagine if Spencer’s Gifts from the mall in the 80’s smoked crack, got skyrocketed into the future, and became a Black Mirror episode.

Working in the digital world, publishing online, and playing the whole social media gig, there are certain things you have to make peace with as a sober person like myself. For instance:

Every day, Facebook will ask if I want to stroll down a memory lane of old updates, many of which feature me with a red bloated face and a pinched hammered look in every picture. Hard pass, FB! But thanks for asking! Ditto I have learned to live with my Instagram feed being filled with people I follow but might not really know (or like, for that matter) as they endlessly post about White Claw or rosé all day.

Is It Possible for Targeted Advertising to Go Too Far?

Then there are the ads and accounts for weed enthusiasts, microbrews, and wine tours that follow you on Twitter based on a few tweets that happen to have the words booze or weed in them, regardless of context. Oh social media, you’re so delightful. But is it possible for the algorithms and targeted advertising to get out of control and maybe cross a line? Can a company be so far off base with their social media ads that people in recovery can even feel triggered? In the case of the disaster that is Wish.com’s Facebook marketing strategy, I would emphatically say yes.

Listen, with a decade plus of sobriety, I try to accept the things I cannot change and the many problematic aspects of Facebook fall squarely in that category. Name something about the social media platform that is awful and troublesome and I will totally agree with you. Yet I still use the damn thing, mainly because as a writer it’s super useful. Also, I’m an addict and maybe mildly hooked on the instant approval I receive every time I post something funny. Regardless, I’ve leaned into its ridiculousness so it takes a lot to make me notice how insane it can be.

That is, until a few months ago. I was scrolling endlessly, as one does, and stumbled upon a Wish.com ad for bullets. Not bullets for guns, but bullets as in the little plastic canisters that hold your cocaine. For people who didn’t share my affinity for that substance or other sniffable powders, bullets were a handy, very 90’s way to keep your blow on you and do it without going to the bathroom to cut lines on the back of gay bar toilets, as glamourous as that all sounds.

Bullets, Meth Pipes, Sex Toys, and Poppers

The ad featured the bullets in a variety of colors and they were only a dollar! What a bargain! I naturally took a screenshot of the ad and turned it into one of those aforementioned hilarious posts. Mainly, it was just so jaw-droppingly blunt that I felt like it needed to be laughed at and shared. Like, really? This is where we are, Facebook? Ads for the new Mindy Kaling movie and Dove Bars alongside cocaine bullets? I mean, talk about spot-on algorithms, but good lord. Obviously, I’m an open book (to a fault sometimes) and I have shared bluntly on Facebook about my drug use. Therefore, I get the ads appropriate to what I talk about. Still, this one felt a little too on the nose, as it were.

Thankfully, I have been sober for a long time, so it didn’t trigger me. But the sheer wildness of the ad was hard to get out of my head.

A couple of weeks later, a friend posted a Wish ad for meth pipes, poppers, and sex toys. A former meth addict and gay man himself, his post expressed amazement at the brazenness of the items and basically called out Wish.com for providing all the tools for a relapse on his timeline. The comments from other sober folks echoed his shock, expressing disgust and anger over such garbage thrown carelessly in someone’s ad feed.

Yes, of course, you can block Wish. Yes, you can report them and take them out of your timeline. However, you don’t get a choice in the beginning. These ads just show up on your page uninvited, regardless of what’s happening in your life and in your recovery.

Days after that post, another gay male friend in recovery shared a similar status about Wish and their ads. Obviously, I was far from alone in my reaction to the inappropriateness of the ads. In fact, there are entire Facebook groups devoted to how insane Wish.com is. Oh, it’s not just drug paraphernalia. It’s everything from magnetic weight loss bracelets to weird teeth-whitening lasers. Oh and don’t even fall down the rabbit hole of all their wacky apparel and sexy underwear like this writer did if you at all value your time. It’s like if Spencer’s Gifts from the mall in the 80’s smoked crack, got skyrocketed into the future, and became a Black Mirror episode.

How Well Do You Really Know Me, Facebook?

Of course, for Wish, none of these ads are personal. They have a whole bunch of crap and they want to sell it to you. Wish doesn’t know I had an epic drug problem nor does it care. Again, I get it. While vast and certainly random af, Wish’s inventory is not the problem. What seems more problematic is that a platform like Facebook has zero regulation or even a thought process about what’s being advertised to the people who use their service. You’d think in a country with an exploding meth epidemic, ads for glass pipes would be off limits, algorithms be damned. Their refusal to address this seems odd, since Facebook takes great pride in how accurately it can read our minds, suggesting who we should be friends with, what pages we should like, and what we should buy. So the fact that someone like me, who very much lives and breathes sobriety out loud on social media, can still get these kinds of ads proves maybe they don’t know us all that well at all.

Besides, shouldn’t we draw a line somewhere prohibiting certain things from being advertised? Meth accessories might be a good place to start that line.

Also not fantastic is what seems to be the blatant targeting of these kind of products to gay men. In a community with a higher rate of addiction, death, and mental illness, it blows my mind that alcohol companies still sponsor pride festivals, travel companies shill drug-soaked vacation packages, and social media platforms suggest products used in practices that are literally killing the population they’re targeting.

This is an advertising hat trick as old as the game itself: market to the folks who use it the most. But like cigarettes or alcohol billboards plastered all over economically depressed neighborhoods, it feels like a cheap shot to push this stuff to gay men who innocently log on to Facebook.

Yet at the end of the day, it’s a drinking and using man’s world so I’m sure very little can be done. If I am in a good spot emotionally in my sobriety, I can go to bars, walk down grocery store wine aisles, and even look at meth pipe ads. But what about people new to recovery, fresh off their last run? Or someone in a vulnerable place and craving their drug? There’s a reason they tell us to stay away from bars or other using-associated cues in early sobriety.

Maybe if enough of us block, report, and unfollow, something will happen. Or is that too much to Wish for?

View the original article at thefix.com

3 October 2019
Sacklers Benefit From Ski Resort Sales In Areas Hit Hard By Opioids

Some believe the Sacklers should donate the profits to fund addiction treatment.

The Sackler family, including those who own Purdue Pharma, have recently earned as much as $116 million from the sale of ski resorts that they owned in areas of New Hampshire, Vermont and Ohio that have been heavily impacted by the opioid epidemic.

The Sackler family owned 54% of Peak Resorts Inc., according to Bloomberg. The company was purchased by Vail Resorts Inc. last week, leaving members of the Sackler family with a massive check and some members of local communities frustrated.

New Hampshire Associate Attorney General James Boffetti explained why to The Washington Post: “It is clear that the Sacklers withdrew a huge amount of money from Purdue Pharma. To the extent that was used for these investments, including in the ski resorts, that is money that they would have only because of this deceptive marketing scheme that they have been running at Purdue.”

Critics Say Sacklers Should Donate The Profits

Amanda Bevard, chairwoman of the board of commissioners in Carroll County, New Hampshire, where one of the ski resorts is located, wants to see the Sacklers give up the money from the sales.

“The 10 counties in the state of New Hampshire spent over $60 million between 2015 and 2019 on the opioid problem,” she said. “It would be really nice if they would donate their profits back to the state of New Hampshire’s counties.”

New Hampshire, which is home to three of the resorts sold, has the forth-highest overdose rate in the nation. In the area around one of the resorts, there were enough opioid prescriptions filled between 2006 and 2012 to give 201 pills per year to everyone living in a five-mile radius, the Post noted. Even when you account for out-of-town travelers to the ski area, that’s vastly higher than the national average of 36 pills yearly per person.

One Local Denies The Outcry Against The Ski Resort Sales

Still, some New Hampshire locals said that the sales were needed, especially in rural areas of the state that could use an economic boost. Gene Chandler, former New Hampshire House Speaker, represents an area that is home to one of the resorts.

“There hasn’t been any outcry that we’ve been aware of,” he said. “Most people seem to be just interested in what’s best for the ski areas. If anything is going to offset opioid abuse and get control of it, it’s a good economy.”

One of the ski resorts included in the sale is in Ohio, near where the opioid lawsuits are being litigated. Greg McNeil used to take his son Sam skiing at that resort, until Sam died of an overdose in 2015. Now, he says that seeing the Sacklers benefit from the sale of the resort is painful.

“Sam grew up skiing on that mountain, so we had many, many fun days,” McNeil said. “There’s a lot that the Sackler family can do so other families don’t have the same experience—the same thing we had with a loved one.”

View the original article at thefix.com

3 October 2019
Can Omega-3s Help Treat Depression?

A panel of experts weighed in on whether the supplement provided any benefits for those with major depressive disorder.

Anyone with major depression or who is at high risk of developing the condition should take a daily dose of omega-3 fatty acids, commonly found in fish oil, according to new recommendations.

The International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research made the recommendations and released them on Sept. 3 in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.

Panel Of Experts Weigh In

“The expert consensus panel has agreed on using [omega-3s] in [major depressive disorder] treatment for pregnant women, children, and the elderly, and prevention in high-risk populations,” the review authors wrote.

The expert panel reviewed research on omega-3s in the treatment of major depression. It concluded that the benefits of omega-3s were well-established.

“Several lines of evidence have suggested the efficacy of [omega-3s] as a preventive and treatment strategy in [major depressive disorder], from epidemiological and case-controlled studies to randomized-controlled trials and meta-analyses,” the authors wrote.

Despite that, there were no clinical guidelines that dictated the best way to use omega-3s for patients with major depression. The committee set out to create guidelines for doctors. They laid out the dosage that patients should get.

“The recommended therapeutic dosages should aim for 1–2 g/day of total EPA from pure EPA or 1–2 g/day EPA from an EPA/DHA (>2:1) combination,” they wrote.

Finding The Right Dosage

The amount of omega-3s can be increased biweekly. That same amount can also be used as a preventive measure for high-risk individuals, the study authors noted.

It’s important to emphasize that the authors said that omega-3s should be combined with other treatments, including antidepressant medications and therapy. They are not effective on their own, but could make a big difference when used in conjunction with other therapies.

Dr. Kuan-Pin Su has studied the effect of omega-3s on patients with depression and anxiety extensively. He told Medscape that their effectiveness is often “overlooked” and should be “on the radar” of more physicians who are treating people with depression and anxiety.

Earlier this year, a study showed that eating a Mediterranean diet can cut the risk of depression by up to one-third. That’s in part because this way of eating includes many healthy fats, like omega-3s.

Food is important to overall mental health, said Charles Conway, a researcher at Washington University in St. Louis.

“Especially the omega three fatty acids,” he added. “Those are known to have pretty clear effects with depression.”

View the original article at thefix.com

3 October 2019
Florida Sober Home Operators Indicted For Health Care Fraud

The three sober home operators named in the indictment allegedly collected $13 million from the scheme.

A sober home in Miami was the site of health care fraud, according to a Department of Justice indictment. The three people named in the indictment allegedly ran a facility that put profit over recovery, collecting $13 million from the scheme.

According to the Miami Herald, Safe Haven Recovery Inc. was involved in fraudulent activity between July 2014 and July 2019, in the guise of a substance abuse treatment facility. However, Safe Haven failed to provide a substance-free environment.

Patient Brokering & Kickbacks

Under the alleged direction of Peter Port, president of Safe Haven, and Brian Dublynn, his second in command, the facility would pay people to come to Safe Haven so they could bill private health insurance companies for substance use disorder treatment services that were either not performed or were not necessary, according to the Herald.

The third individual named in the indictment, Jennifer Sanford, was a marketer for Safe Haven who recruited people to come to the facility.

The defendants caused not only Safe Haven to submit false and fraudulent claims to health insurance plans, but several clinical laboratories as well, for treatment services and laboratory tests that were not provided or necessary.

The three defendants were arrested on September 13 and posted bond by September 23.

Safe Haven Defendants Were Among Dozens Charged In Massive Investigation

Each defendant was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud and four counts of health care fraud. Port and Dublynn were also each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and five counts of money laundering. If convicted, they could each face at least 20 years in prison, according to the Herald.

They were among dozens of people charged in a federal investigation of health care fraud throughout Florida and Georgia that resulted in more than $160 million in fraudulent billings.

View the original article at thefix.com

2 October 2019
Woman Accused Of Giving Co-Workers Meth-Laced Bean Dip

The accused deli worker denies the allegation but co-workers claim she told them that the dip was meant for her and another person.

An Oregon woman was arrested after feeding bean dip to co-workers that she had allegedly spiked with methamphetamine. Cassandra Medina-Hernandez, 38, was placed into custody after offering the dip to a co-worker, who became ill after consuming it.

The co-worker, who was hospitalized, later tested positive for methamphetamine, which led investigators to question a friend of Medina-Hernandez. She eventually turned herself in to law enforcement, who arrested her on suspicion of recklessly endangering another person, among other charges.

Heavy provided detailed information about the incident, which is alleged to have taken place on September 9 at a Thriftway grocery store in Jefferson, Oregon. The location’s assistant manager contacted police to report that her daughter, who also worked at the Thriftway, had been poisoned after accidentally ingesting meth.

A Minor Was Involved

According to a police affidavit, Kelsey Stanley, 27, entered the break room at the store and saw Medina-Hernandez, a Thriftway deli employee making bean dip. Stanley asked to try the dip, and she liked it enough to take some home.

The affidavit also noted that at least one other store employee ate the dip, but they were not reported to have fallen ill. Police also noted that there was also no indication that any customers consumed any contaminated food products.

After leaving the Thriftway store for home, Stanley consumed more of the dip, and told the deputy who wrote the affidavit that she thought it “tasted odd” at one point. She then returned to the Thriftway and reported feeling unwell—”unsteady on [her] feet and [her] stomach was upset,” according to the affidavit.

Stanley was admitted to the emergency room at Santiam Hospital in Stayton, Oregon, where a urine test revealed that she had an unconfirmed positive for methamphetamine. She “emphatically” denied using the drug and allowed police to review her medical records.

Authorities then spoke to two employees at the Thriftway, both of which confirmed that Medina-Hernandez had told them that she had laced the bean dip with methamphetamine, but had intended for it to be consumed by her and another individual.

Surveillance Footage

Review of surveillance video footage taken in the break room on September 9 showed Medina-Hernandez appearing to retrieve and conceal in her hand an item from behind a microwave station, and then placing both the dip and the concealed item on a plate.

After several failed attempts to communicate with Medina-Hernandez, the investigating officer finally contacted her about the incident. She informed him that she would turn herself in, but failed to do so. Finally, on September 25, the officer received a call from the Linn County Parole and Probation Department, stating that she had turned herself in.

Medina-Hernandez was then transported back to Marion County, where she was arrested on suspicion of unlawful delivery of methamphetamine, reckless endangerment and causing a person to ingest a controlled substance.

According to the Portland CBS affiliate KOIN, Medina-Hernandez denied all of the accusations. Heavy noted that jail documents showed that she had been previously convicted on delivery and possession of meth, as well as assault in the fourth degree and robbery in the third degree, and had been arrested for identity theft and possession of a restricted weapon while a felon.

Bail was set at $500,000, and a court appearance has been scheduled for October 9.

View the original article at thefix.com

2 October 2019
10 Dead In 26 Hours From Overdose In Ohio, Fentanyl Suspected

Ohio has experienced multiple mass overdose cases in past few months, with six dead in a single day in August and nine people dead in 48 hours in July.

At least 10 people died of drug overdoses in a period of 26 hours in Ohio, according to medical officials. This high number within a short time frame has the Franklin County Coroner’s Office suspecting the involvement of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin and is often mixed with other drugs to make them more powerful.

“As of about 10 a.m. this morning we have had 10 people die of overdoses in about 26 hours. This is an unusually high number for our county in this period of time,” the coroner’s office said in a statement. “At this time we know fentanyl can be mixed into cocaine and methamphetamine. These can be deadly combinations for those who are using.”

According to ABC News, Ohio has been hit particularly hard by the national opioid epidemic. They have experienced multiple mass overdose cases in past few months, with six dead in a single day in August and nine people dead in 48 hours in July.

The statement about this latest rash of overdose deaths was posted on Facebook by Franklin County Coroner Dr. Anahi Ortiz. The coroner urged those with loved ones who use illicit drugs to carry naloxone, the medication that blocks opioid receptors in the brain and reverses an overdose. She also encouraged those who use risky drugs to take advantage of fentanyl testing strips.

Fentanyl-Related Overdose Deaths Rise

Batches of drugs tainted with fentanyl are considered to be largely responsible for the alarming increases in overdose deaths in recent years. Thankfully, many areas are seeing these numbers level off from 2017 to 2018, likely due to widespread efforts to make naloxone available to the public and educate people on how to administer the lifesaving drug.

Funding for these efforts has also increased substantially in the past couple of years.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced that it will be allocating a new wave of funding to fight the opioid crisis, with senior officials saying that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will be getting an extra $1.8 billion for that purpose.

First Drop In Overdose Deaths Announced

“Our country is seeing the first drop in overdose deaths in more than two decades, more Americans are getting treatment for addiction, and lives are being saved,” said HHS Secretary Alex Azar. “At the same time, we are still far from declaring victory. We will continue executing on the Department’s 5-Point strategy for combating the opioid crisis, and laying the foundation for a healthcare system where every American can access the mental healthcare they need.”

View the original article at thefix.com

2 October 2019
Rob Lowe: Demi Moore Inspired Me To Get Sober

The Parks & Rec actor discussed Demi’s influence during a recent interview on The View.

Rob Lowe said Demi Moore inspired him to get sober in the ‘90s as his career was taking off.

During an appearance on The View on Monday, Lowe recalled that his St. Elmo’s Fire (1986) costar “was the first person I ever knew who got sober.”

“She was a huge inspiration to me,” he said. “It was the ‘80s, we were all doing our thing. I just remember thinking, ‘If that girl can get sober, anybody can.’”

The two also starred in the 1986 romantic comedy About Last Night…

Rob’s Sober Journey

Seeing Moore do it first paved the way for Lowe to follow. He became sober in 1991 following his sex tape scandal which he called “the beginning of it all” in a 2014 interview with The Fix. He celebrated 29 years of sobriety in May.

“Everybody has that person in their life where they go, ‘That’s a great example.’ So it was very helpful,” he said on The View.

Lowe recalled rehab being a positive experience, which gave him the “answers that I didn’t have” about life. “It was like going to school to learn how to live your life with tools that nobody ever taught me,” he said. “Here’s one of the great ones I learned: Never compare your insides to someone else’s outsides.”

Moore Tells All In New Memoir

Moore’s memoir, Inside Out, has caught a lot of attention since it was released in late September for her writing about her marriage to Bruce Willis, Ashton Kutcher, and growing up with her alcoholic mother.

She wrote about relapsing after nearly 20 years of sobriety because she wanted to be “ a fun, normal girl” for ex-husband Ashton Kutcher.

She also shed light on the 2012 incident that landed her in the hospital when she suffered a seizure at a party, where she smoked synthetic marijuana and inhaled nitrous oxide.

“In retrospect, what I realized is that when I opened the door [again], it was just giving my power away,” she said in a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar. “Part of being sober is, I don’t want to miss a moment of life, of that texture, even if that means being in some pain.”

She has re-committed to sobriety since that time. Last October, she was presented with the Woman of the Year Award by Friendly House, a women’s recovery program in Los Angeles.

“Early in my career, I was spiraling down a path of real self-destruction, and no matter what successes I had, I just never felt good enough. I had absolutely no value for myself,” she said at the event.

When she was given the opportunity to change by “two people, who I barely knew,” she took it.

“It gave me a chance to redirect the course of my life, before I destroyed everything. Clearly they saw more in me than I saw in myself, and I’m so grateful, because without that opportunity… I wouldn’t be standing here today.”

View the original article at thefix.com

2 October 2019
DOJ Considered Using Fentanyl For Federal Executions

A three-page memo filed by the DOJ in 2018 discussed the potential use of the deadly synthetic opioid for death penalty cases.

A court filing by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed that the federal government actively considered using fentanyl to carry out executions of death row inmates.

The synthetic opioid—which is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine and one of the primary causes of opioid-related overdose deaths in the United States—was considered for use in death penalty cases in a three-page memo filed by the DOJ in 2018.

The memo did not reveal why the government considered and eventually discarded the idea of using fentanyl in favor of the barbiturate pentobarbital, which Attorney General William Barr said would be used when the government announced new executions slated for later this year.

Coverage by Reuters and other sources noted that the memo was brought to light when a federal judge ordered the DOJ to show its complete “administrative record” on Barr’s decision to use pentobarbital. The full contents of the memo were not made public.

Department spokesperson Wyn Hornbuckle declined to answer questions in regard to the memo, while Mark Inch, the former Bureau of Prisons’ director, acknowledged that he had written the memo but also did not answer any questions about its contents, stating that it would be in conflict with his current role as the head of Florida’s Department of Corrections.

A Drug Shortage & Botched Executions

Reuters and other sources also noted that the department’s consideration of fentanyl might have been due to changes in the availability of drugs used for lethal injections since the last government-ordered execution in 2003.

Pharmaceutical companies have prevented the use of their drugs for execution, which has resulted in both the federal and state governments using different drugs or combinations of drugs to carry out capital punishment sentences.

These “cocktails” have resulted in executions where the prisoners appeared to suffer physical pain. The family of a death row inmate in Ohio sued the state’s director of corrections in 2014 after the prisoner appeared to struggle for air for nearly 25 minutes after receiving a mixture of benzodiazepine and hydromorphone, an opioid, while the 2018 execution of Nebraska inmate Carey Dean Moore, which used a mixture of fentanyl, potassium chloride and a paralytic, was reported by witnesses to take longer than previous executions.

Ohio Legislator Suggests Using Fentanyl Seized By Police

Despite these incidents, some lawmakers have called for fentanyl to be used in executions, including Ohio Republican legislator Scott Wiggam, who in August 2019 suggested the use of fentanyl seized by police in criminal cases for lethal injections.

The state’s governor, Mike DeWine, dismissed the idea on the grounds that it would not pass “constitutional muster.”

Robert Dunham, director of the Washington-based non-profit group the Death Penalty Information Center, said that he wasn’t surprised that the government would consider fentanyl for lethal injections, given its prevalence in the national news.

“But there is something fundamentally wrong about using a drug implicated in illegal activities as your method of executing prisoners,” he added.

View the original article at thefix.com

2 October 2019