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 [...]
Heroin deaths surpass gun homicides for the first time, CDC data shows Opioid deaths continued to surge in 2015, surpassing 30,000 for the first time in recent history, according to CDC data released Thursday. That marks an increase of nearly 5,000 deaths from 2014. Deaths involving powerful synthetic opiates, like fentanyl, rose by nearly 75 percent [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Scott Moran spent the last three years rushing out of the door as part of Cleveland police department's specialized unit that responds to each opioid overdose in the city. The veteran narcotics detective, who is part of a seven-man team called the Heroin Involved Death Investigation unit, uses a non-traditional approach to [...]
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The number of deaths attributed to heroin and other opioids dropped in recent months in what medical and law enforcement officials say is the first sign of optimism that the fight against the deadly opioid epidemic might be working. The decline comes after eight years where deaths climbed dramatically, caused by the [...]
