CLEVELAND, Ohio – Cocaine is becoming more prevalent in Cuyahoga County’s drug overdose deaths, and officials say that’s largely because drug dealers are mixing it with the powerful opioid fentanyl. Data from the Cuyahoga County medical examiner’s office shows cocaine was a factor in approximately 45 percent of drug overdose deaths last year, the highest [...]
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The coroner for the county that includes Ohio’s capital city is warning of a spike in overdose deaths and encouraging friends and family members of addicts to obtain an overdose antidote. Dr. Anahi Ortiz of Franklin County on Wednesday reported five overdose deaths in 24 hours in greater Columbus, for a total [...]
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A recent spike in fatal drug overdoses has Cuyahoga County officials concerned there could be as many drug-related deaths in 2018 as last year's record-setting total. Fourteen people died of drug overdoses during a recent five-day period from Aug. 2 to Aug. 6, the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office said in a [...]
WASHINGTON, D.C. - While Ohio has taken steps to crack down on over-prescription of highly addictive opioids, a new report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found almost 50 health care providers around the state who prescribed the narcotics to at-risk Medicaid beneficiaries during a year-long period that ended in May 2017. [...]
I recently attended a symposium examining how medical schools can prepare future doctors to deal with the continuing opioid crisis. I joined over 90 educators from 30 medical schools at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University to discuss devising a curriculum based on a successful model that Brown has created. The curriculum on [...]
Ohio's employers are asking what they should do about the opioid problem in their own workplaces. The Ohio Chamber of Commerce convened a task force to explore the options. One recommendation coming out of the task force was for employers to be armed with a toolkit of resources to be better prepared to prevent and [...]
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Ohioans lost more than a half-million years of life due to fatal opioid overdoses from 2010 through 2016, according to an analysis by the Ohio Alliance for Innovation in Population Health. On average, the preventable overdose deaths knocked almost 40 years off the lives of the 13,059 Ohioans who died, leaving holes [...]
Believe it or not, mussels in Seattle are testing positive for opioids. Mussels are what are known as “filter feeders” since they absorb food from their surrounding environment. The problem that is surfacing is demonstrating the difference between “pollution” and “climate change,” which so many people assume are the same thing. Mussels absorb also all [...]
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The number of deaths from opioid overdoses continued to increase in 2017 for Cuyahoga County, according to a report from the medical examiner's office. Of a record-breaking 727 fatal drug overdoses in 2017, 492 were from fentanyl, an opioid used as pain medication, and 191 were from carfentanil, a derivative of fentanyl [...]
While America was diverted by homegrown terrorism, economic stress and mass shootings, another scourge quietly moved to the fore. Drug addiction is nothing new. What is new is which part of the population it strikes. All have been hit at different times but right now, it seems to be middle-aged white Americans battling opioids. Opioids [...]
