Tag: News

Grandparents Raising Kids Affected By Opioid Crisis Get Support From New Bill

Louisiana and New Mexico have already passed similar bills to help grandfamilies affected by opioid crisis.

One of the most devastating effects of the opioid crisis has been the enormous amount of children with addicted parents who are abused, neglected, or left without parents due to the parent’s death or inability to caretake.

A new bipartisan bill in Washington, D.C., Help Grandfamilies Prevent Child Abuse Act, is seeking to support those children and their grandparents.

The act, introduced by Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH), a member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee, and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), would grant access to services under the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA).

Families raising these children (typically grandparents) would have access to support for the children who have experienced various traumas, including specialized training to help families access, understand and take advantage of the myriad supports they could be eligible to receive.

Grandparents and caregivers often have numerous resources as foster parents that disappear once they are given permanent custody. Generations United reported that 21% of grandparents caring for grandchildren are living below the poverty line.

States like Louisiana and New Mexico passed similar bills as the Help Grandfamilies Prevent Child Abuse Act, while many states, including Massachusetts, Illinois and Georgia, have bills that still have not been voted on.

“We must be there for the children whose parents have died or are absent because of their substance use disorder,” Senator Hassan said. “Largely due to the opioid epidemic, 2.6 million children are currently being raised by their grandparent—or other relatives or close family friends—without their parents in the home. This bipartisan bill will help ensure that these children get the care and support that they need to thrive.”

Last year, Senator Collins and Senator Hassan worked together to introduce and get passed into law the bipartisan Supporting Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Act. Senator Hassan met this year with grandparents and children in New Hampshire who have been impacted by the opioid epidemic to brainstorm strengthening child abuse prevention laws in order to better support these unique families.

On Senator Hassan’s press release, Senator Collins said, “As the opioid epidemic continues to devastate families across Maine, grandparents increasingly are being called on to become the primary caregivers of their grandchildren. Although this caretaker role can be a source of tremendous comfort and stability for families, it also presents several challenges. The Help Grandfamilies Prevent Child Abuse Act would provide grandparents access to important resources they need to help their grandchildren succeed.”

Click here for more information on the bill and read the bill text here.

View the original article at thefix.com

22 April 2019
Mitch McConnell Pushes To Raise Minimum Smoking Age To 21

The Kentucky senator seeks to reduce smoking among America’s youth by barring all tobacco products, including vapes, until age 21.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is proposing a bill that would raise the smoking age from 18 to 21. His proposal, to be introduced in May, will affect all tobacco products, including the now immensely popular vapes.

McConnell’s home state of Kentucky is home to both a thriving tobacco industry as well as some of the highest rates of cancer in the United States. By the count of the American Cancer Society, lung cancer was responsible for about 66% of cancer deaths in Kentucky between 2012 and 2016.

McConnell’s plan would hold retailers responsible for ensuring that all tobacco-purchasing customers are of age.

The senator believes vaping is “the most serious threat” and hopes that raising the buying age will prevent more of these devices from being passed down to middle- and high-schoolers from their slightly older counterparts.

Preventing teens from getting hooked early is important as almost 9 out of 10 cigarette smokers tried it before they become 18 years old, according to the CDC. Vapes seem to have exacerbated the problem, considering over 3 million high-schoolers used e-cigarettes in 2018—a 78% increase from 2017.

“I hope my legislation will earn strong, bipartisan support in the Senate,” said McConnell. “I’m confident many of my colleagues will agree that protecting our young people from starting tobacco use at an early age can have remarkable, long-term health benefits for Kentucky and the country.”

The bill will exclude those who serve in uniform.

Altria, the producers of Marlboro, say they “strongly supports raising the legal age of purchase for all tobacco products.”

McConnell’s idea isn’t novel. Twelve states have already moved to raise the smoking age to 21. According to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Maryland and New York are also set to enact similar laws.

But according to one Hawaiian lawmaker, raising the age to 21 just isn’t good enough. State Representative Richard Creagan wants to eventually make it illegal for anyone under the age of 100 to get tobacco products.

“We don’t allow people free access to opioids, for instance, or any prescription drugs. This is more lethal, more dangerous than any prescription drug, and it is more addicting, said Creagan, “We, as legislators, have a duty to do things to save people’s lives. If we don’t ban cigarettes, we are killing people.”

View the original article at thefix.com

22 April 2019
Feds Undertake Four-State Study to Address Opioid Crisis

The $350 million research project aims to find a way to reduce opioid deaths by 40% within 3 years.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is gearing up to dole out $350 million to Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York and Ohio to figure out how to stop opioid deaths by 40% in those states over the next three years.

By disbursing the money to the University of Kentucky, Boston Medical Center, Columbia University and Ohio State University, the NIH hopes to curb fatalities from drugs like fentanyl and heroin, which took the lives of about 47,600 people in the U.S. in 2017.

Researchers will get deeply involved with 15 communities that have been hit hard by the opioid crisis to figure out how best to effectively prevent and treat addiction there. They’ll also take a hard look at how factors like unemployment and the justice system contribute to the continued crisis, and experiment with distributing anti-overdose medications to first responders, police, and even schools.

“The most important work to combat our country’s opioid crisis is happening in local communities,” said Alex Azar, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary. “We believe this effort will show that truly dramatic and material reductions in overdose deaths are possible, and provide lessons and models for other communities to adopt and emulate.”

The program will proceed no matter what kind of budget cuts the NIH faces, according to Azar. This is welcome news as some experts believe there is no time to waste.

“We are in such a period of crisis that we need to know in real time what is working and what is not working,” said Dr. Alysse Wurcel of the Tufts Medical Center in Boston.

The opioid crisis is a major issue that requires a multi-faceted approach to solve. On his show, Last Week Tonight, John Oliver called for holding members of the Sackler family, the minds behind OxyContin, accountable for their alleged aggressive and irresponsible marketing of their powerful opioid painkiller. Oliver had several celebrities dramatize testimony given by Richard Sackler.

“The launch of OxyContin tablets will be followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition,” performed Michael K. Williams, repeating Sackler’s infamous proclamation. “The prescription blizzard will be so deep, dense and white.”

Some solutions to the opioid crisis may seem unorthodox and unintuitive, such as a Canadian public health expert’s suggestion to install opioid vending machines in Vancouver, home to “one of North America’s densest populations of injection drug users.” Only proven chronic drug users could scan themselves to get clean drugs for safer consumption.

“We’re acknowledging people will go to any extreme to use this drug. To tell them not to use because it’s unsafe is ridiculous,” said program mastermind Dr. Mark Tyndall.

View the original article at thefix.com

22 April 2019
Study: Drinking A Bottle Of Wine A Week As Bad As Smoking 5 to 10 Cigarettes

A new study is the first to investigate the “cigarette equivalent” of alcohol’s cancer risk.

A new study from the United Kingdom compares drinking a bottle of wine in seven days to smoking five to ten cigarettes.

BMC Public Health published the study, the first to attempt to find the “cigarette equivalent” of alcohol’s risk of causing cancer. Women and men in the study had different results—for women, a bottle of wine a week equals the cancer risk of five cigarettes, and for men, it is ten cigarettes.

“Everybody knows that cigarettes cause cancer,” Dr. Richard Saitz, an addiction medicine specialist and chair of the Department of Community Health Sciences at Boston University School of Public Health, told Live Science. “Hearing that some amount of alcohol is the equivalent of some amount of cigarettes” in cancer risk is a good way to spread awareness, Saitz said.

Saitz noted that the cancer risk of alcohol has been “under the radar,” and the researchers in the study agree. Multiple studies connecting moderate drinking to health risks have been published in the last few years.

It had been widely believed that moderate drinking reduced a gambit of health risks, but new research has tied moderate drinking to higher blood pressure, stroke risk, and now possibly increased lifetime cancer risk.

According to Live Science, lead study author Dr. Theresa Hydes, of the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, said, “Our estimation of a cigarette equivalent for alcohol provides a useful measure for communicating possible cancer risks that exploits successful historical messaging on smoking. We hope that by using cigarettes as the comparator we could communicate this message more effectively to help individuals make more informed lifestyle choices.”

One bottle of wine (the alcohol used in the study) contains near 80 grams (2.8 ounces) of pure alcohol. Using national data from the UK, the study looked at lifetime risk of cancer in the general population, including published research on the relationship between smoking, alcohol, and cancer.

Non-smoking men who drank one bottle of wine a week were estimated to have a 1.0% increase in lifetime cancer risk. Non-smoking women who drank the same were estimated to have a 1.4% increase in lifetime cancer risk.

The research presumes that women are at higher risk due to the connection between alcohol consumption and increased breast cancer rates.

View the original article at thefix.com

20 April 2019
Nurses Condemn Criminal Charges Against Mothers With Addiction

The threat of arrest and sentencing has created what the AAN dubbed a “culture of fear and barriers” for pregnant and nursing mothers.

The Washington, D.C.-based American Academy of Nursing (AAN) called for an end to criminal and civil charges against pregnant women and mothers based on drug use.

The 2,700-member organization outlined its position in a press release, which stated that legal action against pregnant women with substance use disorder (SUD) has resulted in arrests and jail time that have deterred them from seeking essential health services.

The AAN’s policy outlined recommendations to help reverse that trend, including increasing funding for mental health agencies and training for nurses in regard to substance use disorder.

In the press release, the AAN noted that the opioid epidemic has placed substance use disorder in the national spotlight, but in the absence of a “public health response,” expecting and parenting women with SUD have been subjected to criminal and civil actions, including arrests and incarceration.

Currently, a number of states, including Tennessee, Alabama, Wisconsin, Ohio and Kentucky have laws in place that consider drug use during pregnancy as grounds for child abuse protection.

The threat of arrest and sentencing has created what the AAN dubbed a “culture of fear and barriers” for pregnant and nursing mothers, who may avoid “essential health services” over concerns of prosecution.

As the press release noted, “Early entry into maternity care plays a vital role in long-term health and social outcomes,” a notion supported by scientific research that shows that preschool-aged children (3-5 years old) with supportive mothers show significant increases in areas of the brain related to learning, memory and emotional regulation.

To facilitate that crucial level of interaction, the AAN recommended a shift in public health policy away from punitive measures toward mothers and in the direction of recovery and treatment.

The academy offered policy suggestions for federal and state agencies, as well as for individual providers. These included increased funding for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and expanded access to its Clinical Guidance for Treating Pregnant and Parenting Women with Opioid Use Disorder and Their Infants, as well as increased funding for community-based treatment programs for women with SUD and their children.

Additionally, the AAN called on nurses to make sure that clinical assessments of women with SUD are “accurate and comprehensive,” and to keep providers in concert with a “therapeutic health justice approach.”

“The Academy is helping to shape the conversation around providing care to pregnant and parenting women and reducing the stigma of SUDs in the age of the opioid epidemic,” the press release’s authors concluded.

View the original article at thefix.com

19 April 2019
More High School Athletes Are At Risk For Depression

Intense workouts and demanding schedules have a huge impact on the lives of teens who play sports in high school.

Participating in team sports and exercising regularly have been shown to boost mental health—but for serious high school athletes, long practices, high expectations and harsh demands from coaches and parents are contributing to an increased risk of depression.

“The professional consensus is that the incidence of anxiety and depression among scholastic athletes has increased over the past 10 to 15 years,” sports psychologist Marshall Mintz told The Atlantic.

Studies have confirmed this observation, with data from 2015 finding that student athletes had more negative emotional states than students who were non-athletes. This is particularly concerning because depression is already common among teens: almost half of American adolescents will experience a mental illness before they turn 18.

As the world of high school sports has become more intense, athletes are asked to balance rigorous and time-consuming training schedules with homework, socialization and sometimes work. All of this can add huge amounts of stress to their lives, said sports psychologist Lonnie Sarnell.

“Do they need two-and-a-half to three hours of practice?” Sarnell said. “That extra hour of practice adds so much stress when you have four hours of homework to deal with.”

The extra hours of practice often lead to kids staying up too late and getting too few hours of sleep, something that can deteriorate mental health.

“The biggest problem is sleep loss—all these kids are sleep-deprived, and this becomes a major contributor to anxiety and depression,” Mintz said.

In addition, toxic coaches can contribute. High school runner Riley, who The Atlantic identified only by her middle name, said that she switched schools after her running coach berated athletes and gave them the cold shoulder as punishment after poor performances. She said that the coach’s treatment and demand for “mental toughness” left her feeling suicidal.

“We accepted the intense anxiety before races and practice as a necessary side effect,” she said.

Athletes can also be at risk for mental illness when an injury prevents them from playing. That’s what happened to Isabella, a high school lacrosse star who tore her ACL in her junior year.

“It was my worst year ever,” she said of her recovery. “I’d grown up playing lacrosse, and I had no other hobbies. So when you don’t have it, you’re like, What am I going to do?”

Luckily, some people say that with more attention on the mental toll of playing sports, high schools will begin prioritizing the mental health of athletes, just like colleges have done in recent years.

“What happens at the college level will trickle down to high school,” said sports psychologist Shane Murphy. “Over the next decade, we’ll see much more priority given to the mental health of high-school student athletes.”

View the original article at thefix.com

19 April 2019
Country Star Brantley Gilbert Is Enjoying Sobriety And Family Life

In a recent interview, Gilbert joked that he is “allergic” because it causes him to “break out into handcuffs.”

Country music star Brantley Gilbert talked sobriety and spending time with people who drink in a recent interview with PopCulture.com. Gilbert, like many musicians, found himself pulled into substance abuse and addiction as he gained fame and fought hard to reclaim control of his life after years of alcoholism and prescription drug abuse.

Today, he’s seven years sober and is not only able to spend time around people while they drink, he says he enjoys it.

“It’s just one of those things where I’ve decided it wasn’t for me,” he said. “It’s just a thing that’s just not a part of my life any more. It’s around everything I do, and my career is around it. I enjoy being in the environment, I enjoy being around people that drink.”

This includes his wife “when she’s not pregnant,” Gilbert says. He also joked that he’s “allergic” to alcohol, saying it causes him to “break out into handcuffs.”

The singer has joked being arrested multiple times in the past. In an interview with Taste of Country, he responded to a question about Spring Break by saying that his police record in Panama City says he’s been there, “but I don’t recall it.”

“My arrest report says I’ve been to Panama City a few times,” he said, laughing.

All jokes aside, Gilbert’s addiction disorder likely would have killed him if he hadn’t gotten the support and treatment he needed.

In an interview with PEOPLE last year, he revealed that in 2011 his doctors told him that if he didn’t stop drinking, he would be dead within a year. Even then, he didn’t take recovery very seriously.

“I still put it off and was trying to slow down on my own, like, ‘All right I’m only gonna let myself take two pills today. I’m only gonna drink this much of my bottle and make a mark on the bottle.’ And it would work a couple days — and then somebody throws a party.”

Thankfully, fellow country music singer Keith Urban gave Gilbert an unexpected boost of inspiration when he needed it, explaining that creativity could still thrive without alcohol. Now Gilbert is enjoying a growing family with his wife, one-year-old son, and their yet-unborn baby girl. He’s only worried about one day having to explain his addiction disorder to his children.

“It’s one thing now for me and my career,” he said. “It’s another thing when these little ones get old enough to hear stories. They’re gonna know I’m not a super-hero like most kids do. We’ll cross those bridges when we get to them.”

View the original article at thefix.com

19 April 2019
Opioid Vending Machines Proposed By Health Expert

The safe supply program has already secured a $1.4 million federal grant.

Can a free supply of “safer drugs” help push back rising rates of drug overdose and death? What if they were dispensed by high-tech vending machines?

A leading Vancouver-based public health expert is pushing this proposal, faced with the challenge of reducing drug-related harms among the drug-using population in Vancouver, Canada’s Downtown Eastside—described as “one of North America’s densest populations of injection drug users”—and beyond.

Today’s illicit drugs pose a new challenge for public health officials like Dr. Mark Tyndall. According to the BC coroner, in 2018 fentanyl was detected in 4 out of 5 illicit drug deaths in British Columbia. “The plight of people using drugs didn’t change four years ago. The drugs they’re using changed,” Tyndall said in a new interview with Wired.

Pre-approved participants who have proven that they are chronic drug users and have obtained a doctor’s prescription can access the opioid vending machines with a biometric scan of the veins in their hands to confirm their identity. They must undergo regular urine tests to prove that they are taking the drugs.

While Tyndall, a long-time public health advocate and former executive medical director of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC), has already secured a $1.4 million federal grant for the BCCDC from Health Canada to test his safe supply program—giving a regular supply of hydromorphone pills—the national health agency is still reviewing his vending machine proposal.

Safe supply programs already exist throughout Europe, and some Vancouver clinics are testing this idea as well. Some require daily visits to the clinic to get the daily dose. But under Tyndall’s proposal, participation in the free-opioid program would not need to happen under medical supervision. The key to Tyndall’s plan is that participants may access the drugs and use them without going to a designated clinic.

While creating designated spaces for supervised drug consumption (also known as supervised injection facilities) have helped prevent drug overdose deaths and given people easy access to treatment options, Tyndall says there is still a segment of the drug-using population that will not step foot in such a place.

“We’re acknowledging people will go to any extreme to use this drug. To tell them not to use because it’s unsafe is ridiculous,” said Tyndall.

Insite, North America’s first official supervised injection facility, is just one of several such sites throughout Canada.

Tyndall says no matter what his detractors say, it’s all about keeping people alive. “To me, its only ethical,” he said.

View the original article at thefix.com

19 April 2019
Anne Hathaway Talks Giving Up Drinking

Hathaway said that she was surprised about the media attention her announcement to give up drinking has garnered.

Anne Hathaway says that she is giving up drinking for the next 15 or so years, until her three-year-old son Jonathan is out of the house, because the hangovers she gets can affect her parenting.

“I didn’t put [a drink] down because my drinking was a problem; I put it down because the way I drink leads me to have hangovers and those were the problem,” Hathaway told Boston Common magazine. “My last hangover lasted for five days. When I’m at a stage in my life where there is enough space for me to have a hangover, I’ll start drinking again, but that won’t be until my kid is out of the house.”

In January, Hathaway mentioned her sobriety, and said that she was surprised about the media attention to something that she feels is a personal decision, not a principle stance.

“I just want to make this clear: Most people don’t have to do such an extreme thing. I don’t think drinking is bad,” she said. “It’s just the way I do it—which I personally think is really fun and awesome—is just not the kind of fun and awesome that goes with having a child for me. But this isn’t a moralistic stance.”

Hathaway first mentioned her sobriety on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, according to USA Today.

She said, ”I don’t totally love the way I (drink) and (my son is) getting to an age where he really does need me all the time in the mornings. I did one school run one day where I dropped him off at school, I wasn’t driving, but I was hungover and that was enough for me. I didn’t love that one.”

Hathaway told Boston Common that while she doesn’t want to tell other people what to do, she does want to be public about things that are helping her live a healthier life.

“I’ve recently been on a streak where things are just starting to work, so I can share that with people, and they can take from it what resonates and ignore what doesn’t,” she said. “I am not some relentless self-improver, but I am trying to learn to live in the world with as little pain as possible.”

She also mentioned the changes that are coming to Hollywood because of the #metoo movement.

“There are moments of seismic change, and I can’t imagine going back. The people that get it really get it,” she said. “The biggest obstacles at this point are people who claim to get it but haven’t done the work. I think it’s going to take everyone examining how much privilege they have and how it is being used and taking responsibility for creating equality. It’s going to take everyone.”

View the original article at thefix.com

19 April 2019
Georgia Expands Medical Marijuana Program

The new law allows cannabis to be grown at four facilities in the state, and oils to be sold at 28 dispensaries.

On Wednesday, Georgia governor Brian Kemp signed a bill into law that will allow medical marijuana patients to legally purchase some cannabis products in the state.

The state has allowed patients to use cannabis oil since 2015, but they have not been legally able to purchase oils in Georgia, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It is also illegal to grow cannabis or bring it in from another state.

Dr. Larry Tune, a geriatric neuropsychiatrist at Emory University Hospital, said that he would write prescriptions for medical marijuana, knowing how difficult it would be for patients to obtain.

“We can do that paperwork but it’s pointless,” he said.

The new law allows cannabis to be grown at four facilities in the state, and oils to be sold at 28 dispensaries, the AJC reported. Gov. Brian Kemp signed the measure on Wednesday, a little under a week after it passed the Senate.

Kemp said earlier this month that he understood why lawmakers in Georgia were hesitant to change the state’s marijuana laws, but he also recognized that the measure was important.

“It’s a very, very tough issue. But there’s a lot of legislative support for it. I respect the legislative process, and I understand why people are doing it, and I understand why people have grave concerns about this,” he said. “I have all of those feelings. It’s a really tough spot.”

Sen. Matt Brass, a Republican, said that the expansion will make life easier for people who are critically ill, including children.

“Some may argue that this is not medicine,” he said. “But we had testimony of children having 80 to 100 seizures a day, but after taking the oil are having just one a week.”

Although no lawmakers spoke out against the new law, Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan said that the law is not the first step to radially changing marijuana policy in Georgia.

“There is no part of me that wants any steps toward recreational marijuana,” he said.

Shannon Cloud, whose daughter uses medical marijuana, said the law will improve the lives of patients who need the treatment.

“I had a career, and I had to quit in part because of this. I wanted to spend more time with my kids, but it takes a lot of time to coordinate all of this,” she said of obtaining her daughters’ medication. “I am not getting paid. I am just trying to get people the medicine.”

View the original article at thefix.com

19 April 2019