Chicago investigates drugmakers
The city of Chicago has launched an investigation into whether the painkiller industry deceptively promoted their drugs as safe and effective in the treatment of chronic pain, according to a New York...
View ArticleNew Yorker essay: Who’s to blame for painkiller epidemic?
The most revealing moment in Dr. Celine Gounder’s New Yorker essay is the opening anecdote in which she was shocked by the amount of OxyContin prescribed to a patient she was treating in 2004. Gounder...
View ArticleFormer NFL QB details 80-pills-a-day addiction
It’s hard to figure out how the NFL is going to deal with its concussion problem, but a new documentary series spends almost as much time probing another issue plaguing the league: painkiller...
View ArticleNYT series explores Suboxone
This week, the New York Times published a multi-day, multi-media package about Suboxone, the addiction-treatment drug that reduces cravings for prescription opioids. The series contains several...
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Maps show nationwide rise in painkiller overdoses
These maps, from a newly published study in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, provide a vivid representation of the rise in drug poisoning death rates between 1999 and 2009. In 1999-2000,...
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VA patients twice as likely to die from overdose
This National Public Radio piece reports on the overprescription of painkillers to veterans, which has resulted in a death rate among Veterans Affairs patients that is twice the national average. One...
View ArticlePhysicians group backs national prescription monitoring program
In a new policy paper about painkiller abuse, the American College of Physicians supports the establishment of a national Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP). Such a system would help tighten...
View ArticleZohydro: The new OxyContin?
State prosecutors from 40 states asked the FDA to reconsider its approval of a new hydrocodone drug that is five to 10 times more powerful than Vicodin. In October, the FDA approved Zohydro, which...
View ArticleWall Street expects addicts will make Zohydro lucrative
Addiction-news website The Fix has an extensive look at the looming threat posed by Zohydro, the powerful new painkiller the FDA approved recently over the objections of its own advisory panel. The...
View ArticleVermont heroin crisis
On Wednesday, the governor of Vermont bravely devoted his State of the State Message to bad news about his state’s seven-fold increase in opiate-addiction treatment. Gov. Peter Shumlin’s entire speech...
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