Opioids

States Begin Receiving Money From $26B Opioid Settlement

Families hope the money can help combat an epidemic some say is just getting worse, as fentanyl claims lives and targets younger generations.

Opioids rocked households and seized people of all walks of life.

Kim Humphrey, a commander with the Phoenix Police Department at the time, thought he had it all.

“A marriage, a home, a wonderful life raising two sons,” he said. “It was really good.”

But a call about his 15-year-old son ignited distress that would span nearly a decade:

“‘My daughter goes to school with your son and she’s very concerned that he’s going to overdose,'” he continued.

A drug test confirmed their fear — it came back positive for opioids. The struggle spiraled and extended its grip to their second son.

“As a parent, we’re looking at this and saying, ‘We must be the worst parents on the planet,'” Humphrey said.

It took Humphrey and his wife years to find a nonprofit support group called Parents of Addicted Loved Ones, also known as PAL, which he now leads.

“That was the first time that we were sitting in a room full of people who understood,” Humphrey continued.

The opioid crisis contributed to more than 500,000 deaths in the U.S. in two decades. At the epicenter — three major pharmaceutical distributors and manufacturer Johnson & Johnson. A yearslong multistate lawsuit led to a historic $26 billion settlement over the next 18 years.

Now, some of that money is starting to come in. This year, by the end of August, 27 of nearly 50 states that filed lawsuits had received a total of $310 million. Of that, Arizona received $16 million of their more than $540 million settlement — money Humphrey hopes will trickle down to PAL, which is in dire need of financial assistance following the pandemic.

“What we do is this peer-to-peer support that has plenty of research behind it that it works. And it did for us,” Humphrey said.

Each state and county has a say in how the money is spent. In Wisconsin, a spending dispute temporarily blocked funds from distribution.

Sara Whaley, a research associate at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says the school put together five planning principles to help guide states on spending.

“This is the opportunity to kind of look at what you’re doing and where you’re investing money, and if there are any gaps,” she said. “One, is to spend the money to save lives. Two, is to use evidence to guide spending. Three, invest in youth prevention. Four, focus on racial equity. And five, create a fair and transparent process.”

She adds that the settlement includes basic payout guidelines.

“They are things like broadening access to naloxone or increasing the use of medications to treat opioid use disorder, enriching prevention strategies, improving treatment in jail,” Whaley said.

It’s treatment desperately needed as fentanyl fuels deaths and overdoses, with a holistic and smart spending approach.

Humphrey hopes families can find the peace his has now reached. Both his sons are now clean.

: newsy.com

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Officials See Wave Of Rainbow-Colored Fentanyl Across 21 States

The colorful drug comes in various shapes and sizes including pills, powder and blocks that resemble sidewalk chalk.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows more than 10,000 pounds of fentanyl has been seized along the southwest border this year alone. Officials believe this year may surpass last fiscal year — and unlike in the past, officers say some fentanyl trying to get past border checkpoints looks like Skittles or SweeTarts.

Just 2 milligrams of fentanyl — roughly 10 to 15 grains of table salt — is enough to kill.

An overdose shook Shaunna Jacobs awake from her addiction to prescription pills — heroin and fentanyl.

“I was all alone, everyone was asleep and I woke up all by myself and it really scared me,” she said.

Now four years clean, she’s worried about “rainbow fentanyl,” a trend on the rise that warranted a warning from the Drug Enforcement Agency.

The DEA and law enforcement officers reported seizing the brightly colored fentanyl in at least 21 states.

“We consider it a deliberate effort by the traffickers to drive addiction amongst young kids and adults,” DEA Special Agent Orville Greene said.

Greene says he seized the first batch of rainbow fentanyl in mid-August.

On the Arizona-Mexico border, Nogales Port of Entry Director Michael Humphries says in the last month they’ve confiscated at least five loads of rainbow fentanyl.

He worries the dangerous drug will land in the wrong hands.

“A younger child that doesn’t know, that sees it on the nightstand of a parent or a brother or sister — it’s very concerning,” Humphries said. “They may think it’s candy. ”

Customs and Border Protection officers’ K-9s and X-ray machines help track down the deadly drug at the southern border.

Officers have found rainbow fentanyl on people, in various parts of vehicles, even in the air intake of a motorcycle.

Officials say their biggest seizure at the Nogales Port of Entry was 47,000 rainbow fentanyl pills.

The colorful drug comes in various shapes and sizes including pills, powder and blocks that resemble sidewalk chalk — the product of the Sinaloa and Jalisco drug cartels.

In 2021, more than 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses. Sixty-six percent of those deaths were related to synthetic opioids like fentanyl, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“I share my story in hopes that people wouldn’t have to go through what I did,” Jacobs said.

It’s a life-altering lesson to potentially help save countless lives.

: newsy.com

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Why Does U.S. Life Expectancy Rank Poorly?

Life expectancy is a key metric used to determine the heath of a country. The World Bank says it’s improving around the world.

How long will you live? It could be an inspiring or scary question.

But to a demographer It’s neither. It’s a key metric that says a lot about the health of a country.

In 1960 the average American’s life expectancy was almost 70 years old, according to the World Bank.

The U.S. ranked 189th in the world.

Today the nation has made progress, with an average life expectancy of 77.

But other countries have made greater strides. As of 2020, the U.S. was ranked 61st out of 237 nations.

Why have other countries surged ahead? And how could the U.S. improve?

To answer these questions we’re focusing on three countries: the U.S., the richest country in the world, according to the World Bank; Japan, the third richest; and Chile, ranked 43rd.

We spoke to Joseph Chamie. He’s the former director of the United Nations Population Division.

“The U.S. was doing very well right after World War II in 1950, ’55, relative to those countries,” said Chamie.

During the post-war boom, Americans benefited from medical advances, like penicillin and open heart surgery.

Japanese men had a life expectancy of 24 during the war, thanks in part to combat and food shortages.

“Japan’s life expectancy was lower than the U.S. in the early fifties. Of course they have to rebuild their societies,” said Chamie.

The new Japanese government passed 32 health laws between 1946 and 1955 aimed at regulating doctors and nurses, requiring school lunches, reducing pollution and preventing infectious disease.

Japanese life expectancy shot up 14 years between 1947 and 1955, according to government data.

“In the case of Chile, it was even more remarkable,” Chamie said.

Chileans’ life expectancy was 54 years old in 1950.

“Chile in particular saw a dramatic increase in life expectancy. They were able to provide health care systems, developing that preventive care, dropping infant mortality rates,” Chamie said.

Meanwhile in 1961, Japan established universal health insurance.

The government covered half of everyone’s medical costs.

“But there are many factors in Japan that were contributing to a lower mortality. One of them, of course, was diet and obesity. Eating more fish and more vegetables than the American diet,” Chamie said.

Americans lived longer as the 20th century progressed, but we also developed some unhealthy habits.

“In the U.S. the diet started increasing with greater and greater reliance on prepared foods, commonly called junk foods, fast foods. More and more people involved in work and doing less exercise.”

“In the U.S., many people are lacking health care systems in place, so they are not taking preventive action early enough to deal with illnesses. Especially the last 20, 30 years, drug addiction, opioids have gotten a become an epidemic level proportion. Obesity has also gotten much higher,” said Chamie.

“Chile and Japan, they’re providing health care systems, and also supporting people so they feel integrated in society,” Chamie said. “They did some comparisons of Japanese who went to Hawaii and California. And you find that they changed their diet, increased obesity and also lower life expectancy because of that diet change.”

“We’re spending a great deal of money on our health care and doing not as well as many other countries, including China, Japan and Chile,” he continued. “Individual responsibility is certainly one area. Second, providing health care systems and adequate services to assist people so that they will live to old age.”

So many factors determine how long we’ll live. But Chamie says learning from other countries’ successes might help us improve longevity here at home.

: newsy.com

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Drug Overdose Deaths Have Surged During the Pandemic, C.D.C. Says

On Tuesday, several dozen organizations that work on addiction and other health issues asked Mr. Biden’s health and human services secretary, Xavier Becerra, to “act with urgency” and eliminate the rule that doctors go through a day of training before getting federal permission to prescribe buprenorphine. Many addiction experts are also calling for abolishing rules that had already been relaxed during the pandemic so that patients don’t have to come to clinics or doctors’ offices for addiction medications.

Although many programs offering treatment, naloxone and other services for drug users have reopened at least partly as the pandemic has dragged on, many others remain closed or severely curtailed, particularly if they operated on a shoestring budget to begin with.

Sara Glick, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington, said a survey of about 30 syringe exchange programs that she conducted last spring found that many closed temporarily early in the pandemic. After reopening, she said, many programs cut back services or the number of people they could help.

“With health departments spending so much on Covid, some programs have really had to cut their budgets,” she said. “That can mean seeing fewer participants, or pausing their H.I.V. and hepatitis C testing.”

At the same time, increases in H.I.V. cases have been reported in several areas of the country with heavy injection drug use, including two cities in West Virginia, Charleston and Huntington, and Boston. West Virginia’s legislature passed a law last week placing new restrictions on syringe exchange programs, which advocates of the programs said would force many to close.

Mr. Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act includes $1.5 billion for the prevention and treatment of substance use disorders, as well as $30 million in funding for local services that benefit people with addiction, including syringe exchange programs. The latter is significant because while federal funds still largely cannot be spent on syringes for people who use drugs, the restriction does not apply to money from the stimulus package, according to the Office of Drug Control Policy. Last week, the administration announced that federal funding could now be used to buy rapid fentanyl test strips, which can be used to check whether drugs have been mixed or cut with fentanyl.

Fentanyl or its analogues have increasingly been detected in counterfeit pills being sold illegally as prescription opioids or benzodiazepines — sedatives like Xanax that are used as anti-anxiety medications — and particularly in meth.

Northeastern states that had been hit hardest by opioid deaths in recent years saw some of the smallest increases in deaths in the first half of the pandemic year, with the exception of Maine. The hardest-hit states included West Virginia and Kentucky, which have long ranked at the top in overdose deaths, but also western states like California and Arizona and southern ones like Louisiana, South Carolina and Tennessee.

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