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Tag: drug exposure

  • Police Station Evacuated After Possible Fentanyl Exposure

    Police Station Evacuated After Possible Fentanyl Exposure

    The substance believed to be fentanyl made its way into the police station after being confiscated from a suspect at See’s Candy.

    Sunnyvale, California police headquarters were evacuated this week after fentanyl sent multiple officers to the hospital.

    It began with a patrol officer at the Department of Public Safety headquarters. The officer was exposed to what police were told was the deadly synthetic opioid, fentanyl, according to a police report on Thursday, reported The Sacramento Bee.

    The report noted that the officer immediately felt “severe respiratory distress,” according to The San Jose Mercury News. The respiratory distress happened very quickly, according to Sunnyvale police spokesman Jim Choi.

    Police officers are aware of the risk of an accidental overdose due to fentanyl exposure, now more than ever. The Drug Enforcement Administration issued an officer safety alert (that included all first responders) warning of the possibility of such an overdose, the symptoms, and how to respond. Fentanyl is 30 to 50 times more potent than another deadly drug, heroin.

    Police officers can, according to some experts, have a dramatic and overdose-mimicking experience after contact with fentanyl that is essentially a placebo effect. Scottie Wightman, a Kentucky emergency medical technician, went unresponsive after one call. He was treated with naloxone, but a drug test later showed there were no drugs in his system.

    As a precaution, six officers from Sunnyvale’s Department of Public Safety were hospitalized and evaluated for possible fentanyl exposure. All of the officers have since gone home and the evacuation was lifted on the evening of the incident.

    However, Choi said the building was still under a “Level A” quarantine the next morning while crews processed police headquarters for hazardous materials, reported KTVU.

    After the headquarters were completely evacuated, a hazmat team entered to retrieve the suspected fentanyl and “decontaminated the affected areas,” police said.

    “The exposure was contained to DPS Headquarters and there is no threat to the community,” police wrote in a news release. “Police, fire and EMS services were not affected during this incident.”

    The substance believed to be fentanyl made its way into the police station after an officer responded to a business called See’s Candy. A call had been made that a man was urinating in public, and police eventually arrested the suspect on two outstanding warrants in San Luis Obispo County, according to police. The suspect’s name was not released.

    The suspect had a baggie that the police confiscated. The bag was filled with suspected narcotics, and the suspect reported to the police that fentanyl was part of the mix. Results are currently being procured at Santa Clara County’s crime lab, which according to Choi, is likely to take “some time.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • New Bill Targets Pregnant Women With Addiction

    New Bill Targets Pregnant Women With Addiction

    “This bill’s intent is to protect babies, period,” said the Tennessee bill’s original sponsor. 

    A bill that calls for the punishment of women who use drugs while pregnant is being introduced to the Tennessee legislature.

    House Bill 1168 was recently filed by Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver (R-Lancaster) and Sen. Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma). The bill states that if a woman uses an illegal narcotic while pregnant and if the child is born harmed or drug-dependent, the mother could be charged with assault.

    The bill does allow that if the woman completes an addiction recovery program, the charges may be lessened.

    The term “addicted babies” is used in the bill but is considered inaccurate and stigmatizing.

    Dr. Jana Burson, an opioid addiction treatment specialist and outspoken advocate for methadone and buprenorphine, explains the issue: “According to our definition of addiction… you have to have the psychological component of craving or obsession. By definition infants are not able to experience addiction.”

    “This bill’s intent is to protect babies, period,” State Rep. Weaver said. “The number of babies born addicted to drugs, it has not decreased. It has exponentially increased.”

    Voices raised against the bill include Erika Lathon, public relations manager of Addiction Campuses. “We believe that perhaps the bill is well-intentioned, we all want to compel pregnant women who have an addiction to reach out and get treatment and to get help to get into an effective program, but we believe this law could really do the opposite.”

    Lathon would like to see money invested into addiction treatment rehabilitation centers and other drug addiction outreach programs. “Rather than throwing them into jail and then giving them a bunch of legal problems to deal with, a child going into foster care. All of these things is going to cost taxpayers more money on the back end,” Lathon pointed out.

    “A pregnant woman who is battling an addiction is already facing a tremendous amount of stigma and has a number of problems to deal with and then you add on top of that the possibility of her being prosecuted and thrown into jail, we believe that is going to push them further away, make the woman less likely to say, ‘Yes I have a problem, yes I’m addicted, yes I need help,’” Lathon said.

    WTHR reported that if the bill is made into law, it will go into effect on July 1.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Pennsylvania Supreme Court To Decide If Prenatal Drug Use Is Child Abuse

    Pennsylvania Supreme Court To Decide If Prenatal Drug Use Is Child Abuse

    A lengthy legal battle has been waged by the state against a mother whose newborn was hospitalized for 19 days to treat drug withdrawal.

    The highest court in the Keystone State this week heard arguments on the divisive matter of whether prenatal drug use counts as child abuse. 

    Attorneys for child protective services framed it as a matter of “human rights,” while defense lawyers for an unnamed mother warned that criminalizing such behavior could be a “slippery slope,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. 

    The Pennsylvania Supreme Court case revolves around a woman who tested positive for a medley of drugs—including pot, opioids, and benzodiazepines—just after giving birth in a central Pennsylvania hospital. Afterward, her newborn was hospitalized for 19 days to treat drug withdrawal.

    Children and Youth Services took custody of the baby and accused the mother of abuse, setting off a lengthy legal battle still winding through state courts. 

    Early on, a Clinton County court decided that the mother’s drug use didn’t constitute child abuse as a fetus is not a child. But during the appeals process, a Superior Court bounced the case back to the lower court, though two judges raised concerns about the implications of labeling drug use during pregnancy as a form of abuse.

    “Should she travel to countries where the Zika virus is present? Should she obtain cancer treatment even though it could put her child at risk?” wrote Judge Eugene Strassburger, according to the Philadelphia newspaper. 

    Earlier this year, attorneys for the mother—who is identified in court filings only by her initials—asked the state’s high court to take up the case, and this week the justices heard oral arguments from both sides. 

    “Failing to heed a doctor’s advice to take folic acid, if the child is born with a neural tube defect, then the mother could be a child abuser under the county’s reading of the statute,” said attorney David Cohen, arguing that labeling prenatal drug use as child abuse could open the door to a variety of similar arguments against unhealthy behavior. 

    But Justice Christine Donohue called that “slippery slope” argument “too much,” and said she wasn’t sure that she’d “buy” it. Meanwhile, county CYS attorney Amanda Browning told the court that the case was about “human rights, equal protection and child welfare,” pointing to the painful withdrawal process after birth.

    It’s not clear when the high court will issue its decision.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Pennsylvania Prisons Ban Books Due To "Drug Smuggling," Twitter Erupts

    Pennsylvania Prisons Ban Books Due To "Drug Smuggling," Twitter Erupts

    Pennsylvania Department of Corrections took to Twitter to defend the banning policy and were promptly ripped a new one by Twitter users.

    The Pennsylvania prison system got hilariously dragged on Twitter after officials claimed they’d intercepted a letter about drug-smuggling—when in fact the neatly-penned missive mentioned nothing of the sort. 

    The tweet and its aftermath are just the latest bizarre fallout from the alleged drug exposure incidents and subsequent book-banning policy that the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections defended in the first place. The letter, they said, was proof of the need for stricter book-sending policies to tamp down on drug trafficking into the facility.

    “Do you have any old books you read already? If so I want you to send them to me,” reads the inmate letter posted to Twitter on Sept. 14. Over the course of the next few lines, the missive-mailer explains how to game the system to send in used books as if they’re new, thus making it possible to get in a wider array of reading material for a lower cost.

    Nowhere in the 14 lines of writing does the letter mention drugs, or include instructions about how to conceal any type of material in the mailed-in books.

    “P.S. A dictionary would be lovely,” the prisoner scrawled in the margin with a smiley face.

    Nonetheless, prison officials spotted the literary subterfuge and saw something more sinister. In their tweet, the department described the note as “a letter from an inmate to family members describing how to smuggle drugs through a popular book donation program.”

    Twitter was not having it. 

    “That’s weird,” tweeted the Rhode Island chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. “Is ‘dictionary’ code for drugs? Many of my clients have asked for dictionaries over the years, and when I had actual dictionaries mailed to them, they did not ask me why I sent books instead of drugs. Please advise.”

    Another Twitter user wrote, “Ah yes, classic drug dealer lingo like ‘A dictionary would be lovely.’”

    Others joined in.

    “Do you know what a book is?” another user tweeted. More and more smart-alecky commenters piled on, ensuring the prison system’s tweet got soundly ratioed into Twitter infamy. 

    “Sir, I was promised a letter describing how to smuggle drugs & all I got was this lousy letter describing how to donate books,” tweeted another Twitter snarker. 

    The chain of unfortunate events that led to the Twitter dragging began a number of weeks ago after 57 prison staffers were sickened in a series of 28 alleged drug exposure incidents.

    In response, prison officials instituted a statewide lockdown in late August and shut down all mail. Afterward, prison brass linked it all to synthetic cannabinoid exposure—but experts told the Philadelphia Inquirer that it was more likely a “mass psychogenic illness.”

    “We see it all the time with law enforcement,” said Jeanmarie Perrone, director of medical toxicology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. “Police pull someone over and find an unknown substance. Suddenly their heart’s racing, they’re nauseated and sweaty. They say, ‘I’m sick. I’m gonna pass out.’ That is your normal physiological response to potential danger.”

    Another physician called the possibility of cannabinoid exposure through the skin “implausible.” But whatever caused the officers’ sickness, there’s been little doubt that the system—like prison systems in other states—has seen an uptick in K2 smuggling. 

    Accordingly, the Keystone State’s prisons announced plans to spend $15 million to up security with body scanners for visitation, digital mail delivery, drone-detecting equipment—and a shift to e-books.

    View the original article at thefix.com