Tag: News

China Agrees To Increase Fight Against Fentanyl

China was labeled the “primary source” of fentanyl in the United States in a 2016 intelligence report by the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged to crack down on trafficking and manufacturing of the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl as part of larger negotiations between the United States and the Asian superpower.

Speaking after a dinner meeting on December 1, 2018 between Xi and President Donald Trump at the Group of 20 meeting in Buenos Aires, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a statement that China will enforce stricter rules in regard to the drug and work more closely with US law enforcement.

Trump praised Xi’s decision to reporters aboard Air Force One, calling it a “game changer” for the American people.

China was labeled the “primary source” of fentanyl in the United States in a 2016 intelligence report by the Drug Enforcement Agency, which further claimed that production of the drug – which was the cause of death in nearly half of the more than 70,000 overdose mortalities in 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – and its analogues faced lax regulation in China, allowing for widespread production and sale through the internet.

The Chinese government has attempted to correct the situation through arrests of drug traffickers and seizure of analogues, but its top drug official, Yu Haibin, told reporters in 2017 that there was “little evidence” that the country was producing the chemicals used to create fentanyl.

Congressional investigations in 2018 found that Chinese opioid manufacturers were easily exploiting loopholes in the US Postal Service to ship large quantities of fentanyl and other drugs to the US, which prompted lawmakers from both political parties to press Trump on making fentanyl part of the upcoming meeting with China to avert a looming trade war between the two countries

At the December 1 dinner, Trump told reporters in the room that he would address these concerns as part of his conversation with President Xi. As Bloomberg News noted, Wang, the Chinese Foreign Minister, later said the country will not only “tighten supervision of fentanyl and revise rules on the drug” but also work more closely with US law enforcement. Wang also said that the country would impose stiffer penalties on fentanyl traffickers.

“What he will be doing to fentanyl could be a game changer for the United States and what fentanyl is doing to our country in terms of killing people,” said Trump at the press conference aboard Air Force One. “If [traffickers] get caught, they have the highest level of punishment.”

View the original article at thefix.com

4 December 2018
Opioid Court Aims To Prevent Overdose By Offering Treatment

The Rochester-based opioid court offers treatment instead of jail time for minor drug-related offenses.

A new court program in Rochester, New York aims to save lives by connecting people with opioid use disorder with treatment immediately, lessening their risk of overdose after spending a brief amount of time detoxing in jail.

“Their tolerance goes down from their short stay in the jail, and that’s when they use again and fatalities occur,” Monroe County Court Judge John DeMarco, who will oversee the new program, told WHAM.

Rochester helped lead the national push for drug courts, which offer treatment instead of jail time for minor drug-related offenses. However, the drug court program in Monroe County has a months-long waiting list. Officials noticed that people with opioid use disorder weren’t getting the chance to participate in the program because they often relapsed after being released from jail following their arraignment.

To help prevent overdoses, the new program, called Opioid Stabilization Part (OSP), will evaluate people at the time of their arrest and help connect them with immediate treatment. opioid court — as it’s already being called — is meant to serve the people who are most at-risk for overdoses.

“We have their attention. Having their attention creates maybe the only opportunity that those folks have to commit to get this thing turned around,” DeMarco said.

As part of the program, people showing signs of opioid use will be screened at Monroe County Jail the day of their arrest. Those who screen into the program will have their criminal cases put on hold. Instead of waiting for arraignment and being released on bail — oftentimes to return to the community to get high — participants will quickly be seen by a special judge and enrolled into treatment. From there, participants need to check in with the judge daily in person, if they are in an intensive out-patient program.

People who do not have insurance will be able to access treatment thanks to a $1.8 million federal grant for the program.

Law enforcement said that the people who will use opioid court are often more of a danger to themselves than to others.

“We recognize they’re at high risk,” said Monroe County Sheriff Todd Baxter. “That’s exactly what we’re trying to we[a]n out of the jail and put them where they belong, into a bed and treatment program.”

District Attorney Sandra Doorley said the people in opioid court do not represent a danger to the community. In fact, she said that these people would normally be released from jail, just with less supervision than the opioid court program will provide.

“They’re usually given bail, so they’re released (into the community) anyway,” Doorley said. “At this point we’re not allowing violent felons to get into the program.”

A similar program that launched in Buffalo, New York last year has not lost a single participant to overdose.

View the original article at thefix.com

4 December 2018
Senator Cotton Pushes Back On Sentencing Reform Bill With Fake News

The sentencing reform bill (FIRST STEP Act) would lower mandatory minimums for certain drug crimes and eliminate the crack/cocaine sentencing disparity retroactively.

Despite broad bipartisan support for what could be a landmark shift in federal drug laws, the FIRST STEP Act still has one very predictable, very vocal detractor: long-time drug warrior Sen. Tom Cotton.

Even as Democrats, Republicans, the president and the American Civil Liberties Union all come together behind the 103-page bill, the Arkansas Republican has been penning op-eds and tweeting hot takes.

“If the bill is passed, thousands of federal offenders, including violent felons and sex offenders, will be released earlier than they would be under current law,” he wrote in the National Review. That’s not entirely true.

In fact, the bill would lower mandatory minimums for certain drug crimes, eliminate the crack/cocaine sentencing disparity retroactively, increase reentry funding, require that federal prisons hold inmates closer to home, and mandate the provision of free tampons and sanitary napkins for female prisoners. It would also ban the shackling of pregnant inmates and eliminate the use of solitary confinement for juveniles.

Some progressives think the measure doesn’t go far enough and, as the Marshall Project noted, some of the provisions include things the federal prison system is already supposed to be doing.

But when it comes to early release – despite Cotton’s implications – the bill doesn’t include a few dozen serious crimes, such as terrorism and violent gun offenses. It also excludes “those that are organizers, leaders, managers, supervisors in the fentanyl and heroin drug trade,” according to the Washington Post.

Also, even for those who are able to earn time credit, the chance to get out sooner still lies in the hands of the Bureau of Prisons and its risk-assessment tools.

“At all times the Bureau of Prisons retains all authority over who does and does not qualify for early release,” tweeted Republican Sen. Mike Lee, one of the bill’s co-sponsors. “Nothing in the First Step Act gives inmates early release.”

The Utah senator laid into his Arkansas colleague, calling Cotton’s tweets on the subject “100% Fake News.”

The Washington Post apparently concurred, offering a detailed look at the senator’s claims regarding the proposed legislation – and ultimately giving him a two-Pinocchio lie rating.

View the original article at thefix.com

3 December 2018
Dentist Wrote 200 Opioid Prescriptions For Five Patients In One Year

The dentist who wrote the opioid prescriptions claims state investigator were “telling lies” but he did not provide or clarify any additional details.

A dentist in Tennessee has had his professional license revoked for reportedly writing approximately 200 prescriptions for opioid medications to just five patients, some of whom were never physically present in his office.

A discipline report from the Tennessee Department of Health revealed that Michael R. Tittle, 64, who maintained a dental practice in the small town of Erwin, Tennessee, allegedly lacked the proper records to justify writing the prescriptions, which in one case totaled 71 prescriptions for 10 hydrocodone pills over the course of just six months.

In a statement to the Tennessean, Tittle claimed that state investigators were “telling lies,” but he did not provide or clarify any additional details.

In addition to the revocation of his license, Tittle was also assessed a civil penalty of $13,000, plus court costs not to exceed $3,000. These details, as well as the allegations against Dr. Tittle, were made public on November 15 as part of a monthly discipline report by the state Department of Health, which maintains public records on doctors and other health care professionals throughout the state.

According to the report, Tittle’s office came under investigation after the Department of Health received a complaint about his prescribing practices while on a five-year probation for multiple infection control violations. After reviewing his Controlled Substance Monitoring Database report, the Department requested 13 dental records; these were found to lack “a concise description and justification for the amount and frequency of controlled substances,” according to the report.

Prescription records for five patients were also highlighted in the report; in addition to the aforementioned patient, one patient is reported to have received 49 prescriptions for hydrocodone and 14 prescriptions for oxycodone, totaling 630 tablets, between October 2016 and September 2017.

Another patient reportedly received 24 prescriptions, totaling 210 tablets, for more than a year after undergoing a root canal, while a third received two prescriptions for oxycodone and two for hydrocodone, all totaling 110 tablets, between August and November 2015, despite the fact that no documentation could confirm that the patient had ever set foot in Tittle’s office.

The report also noted that Tittle admitted to having a pre-signed, blank prescription slip in his office that had been “copied onto security paper to generate additional pre-signed prescription slips.”

To settle the case, Tittle agreed to the revocation of his Tennessee dental license as well as $1,000 in civil penalties for each of the 13 records reviewed by the Department of Health and the “actual and reasonable costs” of prosecuting the case. The findings were also reported to the National Practitioner Data Bank.

View the original article at thefix.com

3 December 2018
Woman Sues After Faulty Drug Test Mistakes Cotton Candy For Meth

The Georgia woman spent four months in jail because of a faulty roadside drug test mistook her cotton candy for meth.

A Georgia woman has filed suit after spending almost four months in jail following a faulty roadside drug test that wrongly flagged a baggie of blue cotton candy as crystal meth, according to USA Today.

Dasha Fincher’s federal legal claim, filed Thursday, targets the county commissioners, the deputies who arrested her and the company that makes the test.

The arrest that started it all stemmed from a traffic stop on New Year’s Eve in 2016. Two deputies pulled over Fincher and her boyfriend after spotting dark window tints on their car – though authorities later admitted dark window tints are actually legal.

Police later wrote that the couple seemed nervous, even though they handed over their IDs and agreed to a search of the car. During that search, the lawmen found a plastic baggie with something blue inside.

One of the deputies did a roadside test on the hood of the car – and told her he’d found methamphetamine.

“I knew it was cotton candy,” she told the New York Times, “and for him to come back and say it was meth, I really didn’t know what to say.”

For close to the next four months, Fincher was held in the county jail on $1 million bail, missing family events – like the birth of her grandsons.

“It seemed like everything was going on and I wasn’t there,” she told the Times. “I wasn’t there for my family when they needed me.”

Then, on March 22 a crime lab finally realized there were no drugs in the bag. But it wasn’t until the following month that the results were finally forwarded to local prosecutors, and on April 4 Fincher was released.

“It was crystal-like substances, it was in a cellophane bag, and it was under the floor mat,” Elizabeth Bobbitt, the interim district attorney for the area, told the New York paper. “We are not crazy people down here who would like to arrest people for cotton candy.”

Roadside drug tests have long been a source of controversy and false positives, as detailed in a 2016 New York Times Magazine and ProPublica investigation.

Based on those $2 tests, officers have wrongly identified everything from motor oil to cat litter to donut glaze as illicit drugs.

“Why, it’s almost as if these field tests will say whatever law enforcement officers want them to,” Radley Balko wrote in the Washington Post in 2015.

In this case, the suit alleges, it was blue food coloring that foiled the test and netted a faulty result.

The test-maker did not respond to a request for comment.

View the original article at thefix.com

3 December 2018
UFC’s Jon Jones Is Better But Not Ready For Sobriety

UFC fighter Jim Jones discussed addiction and striving for sobriety in a recent interview.

Jones says he’s in a “healthy place” while still occasionally drinking and smoking pot.

Jon Jones has had a controversial career tainted by drug abuse, at one time losing his title and facing an indefinite suspension over a drug-fueled hit-and-run that left a pregnant woman with a broken arm.

After rehab and finding sobriety, the former champ’s career is slowly coming back to life. However, Jones says that while he’s committed to his health, he’s not staying completely clean. When asked if he considers himself sober, Jones answered no.

“No, no, I still drink. Smoke pot too every once in awhile,” Jones told ESPN’s Ariel Helwani. “My coaches know I drink, I’m done trying to hide being . . . not like a crazy, crazy amount. Some weekends, mainly on the weekends.”

But Jones’ moderate use isn’t exactly by choice. When asked if he wants to be completely sober, Jones had a surprising answer.

“It was something that I was striving for, especially going to rehab this summer, I was striving for complete sobriety,” he told Helwani. “I’m not ready for it. It’s not who I was and not who I am in my life, in my career. And… I’m at a place where I can be honest with myself.”

The former champ has been in and out of rehab and has faced multiple suspensions from the UFC over his drug use. One of the more public incidents involved a hit-and-run in New Mexico where Jones left a pregnant woman with a broken arm at the scene of the accident in 2015. The incident came a few months after Jones was forced to go to rehab after testing positive for benzoylecgonine, an indicator of cocaine use. Jones only stayed in rehab for one night.

“I was a guy who loved to party. I was able to win my fights and I felt as though it really wasn’t affecting me that bad. I would go out on the weekend and then on Monday morning I’d be the first guy at practice, working harder than everybody else. So, I felt as though I could get away with that,” he told MMA Fighting in 2015.

UFC fans will have to wait and see if this round of getting clean will be the time Jones will knock out his problem for good. On December 29, Jones will be fighting for the first time since receiving his 15-month suspension.

View the original article at thefix.com

3 December 2018
Eliza Dushku Celebrates 10 Years of Sobriety

“Buffy” actress Eliza Dushku shared her sobriety milestone on Instagram.

Eliza Dushku, best known for her roles in the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the film Bring It On, is celebrating 10 years sober on Instagram.

Posting an image of a large Roman numeral X, the 37-year-old actress bubbled with positivity and gratefulness in the caption. “#grateful #sober #X yrs today. holy sh*t. #aa #twelvesteps #willingness a #sponsor #fellowship #service & asking for help #odaat saved my life,” Dushku wrote on the post. “If you’re struggling w #alcohol &/or #drug #addiction, I promise, you don’t have to live that way anymore.”

She topped off the post with a little encouragement and advice for any of her fans who might be facing the same problems. “Reach out, your life is waiting for you: www.aa.org & www.na.org,” she wrote. Possibly making a reference to her Buffy character’s name, she added “Have #FAITH.”

Dushku hasn’t always been so public about her recovery. For years, she kept her struggles with substance abuse under wraps, only speaking directly about it for the first time in March of last year at the Youth Summit on Opioid Awareness in New Hampshire.

“Something a lot of people don’t know about me is that I am an alcoholic and I was a drug addict for a lot of years,” Dushku told a crowd of 8,000 middle and high school students. “You hear people say ‘I am that’ because I am that, and I’m always going to be that, but the difference between me and an alcoholic or drug addict that still drinks and does drugs is that I am sober.”

Dushku said that she began using drugs when she was just 14 years old.

“I loved the first time I took a drug because I loved how it made me feel. I loved the way it made me not feel, and I didn’t have to feel,” she recounted to the audience. “It was fun and I loved it, until it wasn’t.”

Her substance abuse problems got worse, spiraling down until one day her brother stopped allowing Dushku to visit her niece while under the influence.

“I remember my brother telling me he didn’t want me to be around my niece because he didn’t trust me,” Dushku said. “I’m a really good auntie today. But you know what? He was right. I’m a good person, but when I did drugs and I drank, I didn’t make good decisions. … All it takes is one bad decision. You don’t have to live like that.”

These days, Dushku is doing better, celebrating 10 years sober as well as getting married in August.

View the original article at thefix.com

3 December 2018
Andrew Zimmern & Other Sober Chefs Talk Recovery, Career Success

“If I wasn’t sober I couldn’t have done any of the things I’m known for,” Andrew Zimmern said in a recent interview about chefs and sobriety.

Working in the restaurant industry while maintaining recovery may not seem like an easy feat, but more and more individuals are taking it on.

Men’s Health recently spoke to five male chefs living in recovery: Andrew Zimmern, the host of Bizarre Foods; Portland chef Gabriel Rucker, known for restaurants Le Pigeon, Little Bird, and Canard; southern chef Sean Brock; Gregory Gourdet, executive chef of Departure restaurants and Top Chef contestant; and Michael Solomonov, co-founder of CookNSolo in Philadelphia.

The men, in one way or another, all attribute their success to their ability to maintain their recovery. Zimmern has been in recovery for 27 years and tells Men’s Health that if not for his recovery, he would not be alive.

“If I wasn’t sober I couldn’t have done any of the things I’m known for,” Zimmern said. “I’d definitely be dead. I had a very, very low bottom. I was an alcoholic, a drug addict, a homeless, abandoned-building-squatting thief the last year that I was using. I was 100 percent and completely a taker of things and a user of people.”

As is typical, the men say there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to maintaining sobriety. Zimmern is a believer in 12-step programs, as is Rucker, who recently celebrated five years in recovery.

“For me, my path of sobriety is through using AA and the 12 steps; those things are applicable to everything in life,” he said. “There’s that and then I don’t smoke cigarettes anymore, I don’t drink. I wake up early. I’m at the gym by 4 a.m. boxing and working out six days a week. I take care of myself. I think about what I eat. My passions have switched from getting fucked up and partying to going to bed early, waking up and seeing what kind of circuit I can do.”

Brock is newer to recovery, announcing his sobriety in July 2017. He tells Men’s Health that therapy has played a major role in his recovery, and that he wants to bring the tools that have helped him into his new venture.

“I’m opening a pretty neat restaurant in Nashville where one of the big focuses will be creating a safe place for people to work,” he said. “There’s going to be a full-on soundproof mindfulness room where I hope to share all of my daily practices with a team on how to stay centered and grounded and happy.”

Gourdet, who is approaching 10 years of sobriety, tells Men’s Health that his recovery has changed over the years, as has the way he views health and the world.

“I have a voice in my community and in my country, and a lot of the political issues are actually food issues, and that has been a great platform for me to be able to express myself and learn and feel like I’m doing something for our country and our community,” he said.

Solomonov has also been sober 10 years, and says the growth of the sober chef community has been rewarding and comforting.

“[Now that there’s a community of chefs in recovery], it feels amazing,” he tells Men’s Health. “There’s a place for us to go to now, a place for us to talk… You’ve got people in our industry who are super successful that are talking about vulnerability and things that as a culture we swept under the rug for a very long time. There wasn’t a place to talk about this stuff before. And now there is.”

View the original article at thefix.com

1 December 2018
Could Social Media Addiction Be Worse For You Than Cigarettes?

Social media addiction is being compared to cigarettes but can it really do that much damage?

Social media can certainly be addicting, and there are some who feel it can be harmful to your mental health if you spend too much time on it. But can it truly be more harmful than cigarettes?

As Forbes reports, Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, made this analogy at the World Economic Forum earlier this year, and he also proclaimed that social media companies like Facebook should be regulated “exactly the same way you regulated the cigarette industry.”

In an interview with CNBC, Benioff also proclaimed that “Facebook is the new cigarettes. You know, it’s addictive. It’s not good for you. There’s people trying to get you to use it that even you don’t understand what’s going on. The government needs to step in. The government needs to really regulate what’s happening.”

As Benioff concluded, “Technology has addictive qualities that we have to address… product designers are working to make those products more addictive and we need to rein that back.”

But is he overreacting?

There have indeed been studies that claim that being addicted to social media is a real phenomenon and, like video games, social media is designed to be addictive. When you’re running a business, you want people to spend as much time on your site as possible to drive sales.

Forbes listed a number of factors that explain why people can be vulnerable to social media addiction. One of them is that people are “social creatures” who want to reach out and belong, and we crave validation. Social media can reward that validation with “likes,” “follows” or a smiley face emoji.

Another factor that can drive social media addiction in people is FOMO, or the “fear of missing out.” According to one study, 67% of people polled who used social media were terrified that they would be missing out on something if they didn’t check in with social media.

As Sean Parker, former president of Facebook, told the Guardian, businesses use these plaforms as “a social-validation feedback loop… exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”

This is actually not the first time that social media has been called “the new cigarettes.” Oren Frank, the founder and CEO of Talkspace, made the same prediction in the Huffington Post several years ago, warning that “social media platforms are not only full aware of their impact, but actually leverage it to make sure this addiction is maintained and increased, not hesitating to use psychological levers and biases to guarantee that we will keep coming back.”

At the same time, comparisons were recently made to social media and cocaine, though scientists from the Oxford Internet Institute felt this was an irresponsible comparison to make.

The director of the institute, Andrew Przybylski, told Business Insider, “Dopamine research itself shows that things like video games and technologies, they’re in the same realm as food and sex and all of these everyday behaviors, whereas things like cocaine, really you’re talking about 10, 15 times higher levels of free-flowing dopamine in the brain.”

View the original article at thefix.com

30 November 2018
Mental Health Clinic Finds A New Home In Walmart

The mental health clinic inside the Texas Walmart offers a variety of treatments and access to a licensed clinical social worker.

Mental health services are being offered in Texas at an unexpected location: Walmart.

According to the Boston Globe, Boston-based company Beacon Health Options opened the small clinic in the Carrollton, Texas Walmart last week.

Eventually, Beacon plans to open additional clinics in similar spaces in hopes of increasing mental health care options for those who may not have access to it otherwise.

Currently, the Texas clinic has one licensed clinical social worker and provides treatment for anxiety, depression, grief, relationship issues and other common stressors. Patients can go online or call to schedule appointments. Walk-ins are also welcome. If the clinic is too busy, patients will have the option to use Skype to speak with a professional.

The clinic is not meant for individuals with severe forms of mental illness, and operates on a sliding scale for patients without insurance.

“People don’t know how to find a behavioral health or mental health professional,” said Beacon president and CEO Russell Petrella. “People don’t know where to go and what to do… We’re trying to mainstream behavioral health services.”

According to Bonnie Cook, executive director of Mental Health America of Greater Dallas, the clinics are needed, as Mental Health America recently rated Texas as the state with the least access to mental health care.

“As a mental health community, we have to start thinking outside the box,” Cook told the Globe.

On the other hand, some professionals were critical of Beacon’s new venture because of the company itself.

“Offering mental health care in a retail setting is innovative and imaginative, and it could work,” Gary A. Chinman, Brookline psychiatrist and president of the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society, told the Globe.

However, he added that Beacon “would have to change a lot more about their business model for it to be successful.”

Vic DiGravio, president and CEO of the Association for Behavioral Healthcare, expressed the same concerns, stating that Beacon is restrictive when it comes to providing care because of “procedural hurdles and inadequate pay.”

“If Beacon were serious about expanding access to mental health services, it would focus on doing a better job in its current lines of business,” DiGravio told the Globe. “What Beacon is really good at is limiting access to treatment. They’re not so good at promoting access to treatment.”

In speaking to the Globe, Petrella did note that some providers struggle with “administrative hassles” and that steps are being taken to solve such issues.

He adds that Beacon has good intentions when it comes to clinics such as the one in Texas.

“We’re trying to fill in the gaps in care, trying to do it in a reasonable way, with low stigma, and make it convenient,” Petrella stated. “Hopefully, we can improve the quality of some people’s lives.”

View the original article at thefix.com

30 November 2018