Deadly fentanyl behind America\’s dramatic doubling of synthetic opioid death rates
- Rachel Connolly 31 JANUARY 2018 – 10:20AM
President Donald Trump took a few minutes in his State of the Union address to acknowledge what he called the \”terrible crisis of opioid and drug addiction – never been has it been like it is now\”.
The American President told Congress that \”we have to do something about it\”, stating that 174 drug-addiction caused deaths a day meant that \”we must get much tougher on drug dealers and pushers\”.
This should come as no surprise. The crisis, which claimed well over 100,000 lives between 2015 and 2016, is now so widespread and catastrophic it was declared a public health emergency by President Trump in October.
The rate of American deaths caused by overdoses of heroin-like synthetic opioids has doubled since 2015, in a tragic symptom of the opioid epidemic ravaging the United States.
The US\’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has published figures showing that the rate of deaths due to synthetic opioids excluding methadone, such as fentanyl and tramadol, jumped from 3.1 per 100,000 in 2015 to 6.2 per 100,000 in 2016.
The total number of deaths due to opioid overdoses also climbed from 52,400 to 63,600, a 21 per cent increase – marking a steady rise since 1999.
Synthetic opioids are the biggest killers
The dramatic rise in the use of synthetic opioids owes more to practicality than demand, Dr David Herzberg, a University of Buffalo expert in the history of drug addiction, told The Telegraph.
\”Fentanyl [the most widely used synthetic opioid] is much easier to smuggle than heroin because you need less of it,\” he said.
Since synthetic opioids are made in labs rather than from plants, like traditional heroin, they can be made anywhere in the world, and vary dramatically in strength.
Fentanyl is around 50 times stronger than heroin – and some new strains are up to 10,000 times stronger
For complete story FentanylFrenzy
Heroin entered their lives so easily. For 10 addicts, the hard part is staying clean.
They got the pills from their doctors, then kept using them until they couldn’t stop. They switched to heroin because it was cheaper, because a friend said it was an easier, better way to get high.
They went to parties as teens, took pills, snorted powders. They got bored with the drugs they were doing and then found heroin, the drug they loved the most.
They had faced abuse, poverty, tragedy. Their pain was deep, and psychological, and the drug was an escape.
The stories of 10 recovering heroin addicts from Wisconsin are the stories of millions of Americans who have been hooked on opiates and either died, or lived with the consequences. They’ve lost friends. They’ve been arrested. They’ve lost touch with their family and friends, lost custody of their children.
COUNTY BY COUNTY: Deaths and ODs in Wisconsin.
“It wasn’t what they always told us it was going to be,” said Moriah Rogowski, a 22-year-old recovering addict, about her first time using heroin. She didn’t develop an addiction right away. But somewhere, more gradually than she expected, she lost control.
Like the other nine recovering heroin users profiled in this special report from USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin, Rogowski has taken back control of her life. She’s clean. She lives in a different city, imagines a different future for herself.
Recovery from opiate addiction is hard, filled with setbacks. But these 10 people from across Wisconsin have taken the first steps toward a life after heroin. In photos, in words and in their own voices, these are their stories about how they started on heroin and fought to get off the drug.
\’That was the only way I liked to get high\’
Moriah Rogowski, Green Bay
Moriah Rogowski liked the feeling of downers: Percocet, Vicodin, Oxycontin. She and her friends, the summer before high school, would go out to parties and crush pills and snort them.
She and her three siblings lived in a rural home near Mosinee, where she was homeschooled until eighth grade. In high school, she found her place among the stoners. One night she found herself in a drug house in Marshfield with 33-year-olds. She was 15.
That was the day she first tried heroin. She was afraid of needles, so she let someone else shoot the drug into a vein in her arm.
\”That was the only way I liked to get high after that,\” she said For complete story FAMILIESAlwaysLOSE!
AG SESSIONS CITES ROLE OF DRUG POLICY IN ADDICTION AND DEATH
29.1.2018
In a speech on January 26, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said: “In recent years, there was an erosion of support for anti-drug law enforcement — in Congress, in state legislatures, and even among some of the general public. One law enforcement professional told me he felt disappointed that government officials didn’t seem to understand the importance of his work. Resources were redirected.
“What has been the result? We saw drug purity and availability go up and drug prices go down. We saw addiction and death spread like never before.”
Attorney General Sessions correctly drew a causal connection between the rise in overdose deaths and drug liberalization movements. He spoke at the Drug Enforcement Administration’s graduation ceremony for its agents last Friday. Graduates must have been encouraged when he said: “So I wanted to be here today to state loudly and clearly: this Department of Justice supports you. We believe in you and the importance — the morality-of your mission.” See entire opioid epidemic speech on DOJ website.
Drug addicts don’t recover easily. Abolitionist Frederick Douglas: “It’s easier to raise strong men than repair broken men.”
Addiction is a “contemporary version of slavery. It destroys autonomy and free will, a foreseeable outcome of using chemicals that artificially suppress and supplant natural brain reward systems.” (Pontifical Academy of Sciences report on drugs, November 2016)
For complete article PermissionIsKillingOurKids
Marijuana-based anti-seizure drug could hit U.S. market in 2018 after strong study results
(GW Pharma spent well over a decade and over billion dollars properly developing an epilepsy medicine from the very complex cannabis plant. This has been painstakingly done with health, safety and well-being of the patient at forefront – NOT a quick fix, symptom abating only quackery!)
By Ariana Eunjung Cha January 24
A new class of epilepsy medications based on an ingredient derived from marijuana could be available as soon as the second half of 2018 in the United States, pending Food and Drug Administration approval.
Officials from GW Pharmaceuticals, the company that developed the drug, on Wednesday announced promising results from a study on 171 patients randomized into treatment and placebo groups. Members of the group, ages 2 to 55, have a condition called Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and were suffering from seizures that were not being controlled by existing drugs. On average they had tried and discontinued six anti-seizure treatments and were experiencing 74 “drop” seizures per month. Drop seizures involve the entire body, trunk or head and often result in a fall or other type of injury.
The results, published in the Lancet, show that over a 14-week treatment period, 44 percent of patients taking the drug, called Epidiolex, saw a significant reduction in seizures, compared with 22 percent of the placebo group. Moreover, more of the patients who got the drug experienced a 50 percent or greater reduction in drop seizures.
EXPLOSIONS LAST WEEKEND HIGHLIGHT MICHIGAN’S PROBLEM CONTROLLING BHO 27/1/18
Two Butane Hash Oil (BHO) explosions ignited in Michigan last weekend, when amateurs were attempting to extract THC from marijuana to make “dabs.” Michigan’s BHO problem will grow into a bigger problem, because legalizers succeeded in getting marijuana on the ballot in November. (Read this article to understand the difference between decriminalization and legalization.)
On Saturday, January 20 in Orion Township, a tenant was making BHO when he suddenly tried to light a cigarette, and everything exploded. The “victim”/maker of the substance was badly burned on his arms and face. He’s been hospitalized, but the other four roommates made it out of the house unharmed.
The next day a 25-year-old in a mobile home park blew out the windows of his kitchen when trying to make BHO. It was 1:30 p.m. in Genesee County, when neighbors heard the loud explosion and called 911.
BHO Labs are part of the current marijuana culture
Butane hash oil fires occur in low rent neighborhoods and as well a exclusive communities such as Butternut Drive in Shelby Township, Macomb County. Butane is the very flammable gas or liquid used in the extraction of THC for “dabs” or “wax.” Making wax or dabs, which can be up to 90% THC is very profitable. Marijuana buds cost between $15 and $20 per gram, but BHO averages a cost between $70 and $100 a gram.
A BHO fire in Oakland Count, Michigan caused explosive damage, shattering windows an objects. A 20-year-old started the fire. Photo: Oakland County sheriff’s office
In order to produce the substance, the producers must strain parts of the cannabis plant through liquid butane. Then they heat the contents in order to evaporate the leftover residue which just leaves behind the wax-like substance. In Humboldt County, CA, where a man died making BHO the first day pot was legal in California, officials now control the sale of butane. Marijuana labs have replaced meth labs as the most dangerous drug labs of this decade. For complete article http://www.poppot.org/2018/01/27/explosions-last-weekend-highlight-michigans-problem-controlling-bho/
MARYLAND CHILDREN GET SICK AS BIG MARIJUANA PUSHES AGENDA
24/1/18
Gummy bears in Southern Maryland Middle School
Five schoolchildren were hospitalized in southern Maryland after a middle school student brought and shared marijuana-laced food to school. Following an investigation, the St. Mary’s County sheriff has charged a father from Great Mills with reckless endangerment.
The man’s daughter and four other students had a reaction to marijuana laced gummy bears on January 2, the first day after winter break. All five students reported feeling ill, and they were taken to the hospital in Leonardtown. All children survived and went home to their parents or guardians, but not without a lot of drama. The event triggered a police investigation, and a father has been charged.
In the affidavit filed, the father claims that “the edible gummy candies were given to him by an associate who came to his house for a party.” This man left his candies in a plastic bag in his bedroom, knowing they were easily accessible to the daughter.
For More http://www.poppot.org/2018/01/24/maryland-children-get-sick-big-marijuana-pushes-its-agenda/
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\’It needs to make you uncomfortable\’: the opioid documentary set to shock America
Documentary Amanda Holpuch Wed 31 Jan 2018 22.00 AEDTLast modified on Thu 1 Feb 2018 04.58 AEDT
The Trade is a new docu-series focused on the stories of addicts, their families and the law enforcement officials trying to curb the epidemic that kills 91 Americans a day
Fifteen minutes into The Trade, a new docu-series about the US opioid crisis, a woman is seen injecting heroin in a dingy Atlanta hotel room.
“I hate this shit,” she mumbles as the drug takes hold.
It’s now her friend Skyler’s turn. He ducks into the bathroom to use and soon the two are sitting on the bed: the woman sobs while Skyler simply offers her a cigarette and sits quietly by her side. He’s not panicked and it’s clear this isn’t the first time they’ve gone to a hotel to shoot up.
Each day, 91 Americans die from an opioid overdose. The five-part docu-series, which premieres Friday on Showtime, bypasses the didactic timeline of how the US got to this position and instead places the audience in unvarnished scenes of human suffering.
It’s an intimate style the director, Matthew Heineman, used in the Oscar-nominated Cartel Land, and it puts a face to people affected by the crisis.
The camera keeps rolling as women with children are investigated by police for their connection to the opioid trade in a home filled with kilos of heroin, in a car driven by an intoxicated mother and in a front yard, being taken away by child protective services.
For Complete article https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/jan/31/it-needs-to-make-you-uncomfortable-the-opioid-documentary-set-to-shock-america
Official Trailer https://youtu.be/hSh9go26awE
Marijuana addiction is real, and teenage users are most at risk
In the rush to legalize marijuana in Canada, medical experts are warning about weed’s alarming side, particularly for younger users
Joe Castaldo January 15, 2018
![\"\"](\"http://www.macleans.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/MAC01_WEED_ADDICTION_POST01-1.jpg\")
(Photograph by RAINA+WILSON)
Sean Savoie first smoked marijuana around the age of 14 when, behind a gas station, a friend handed him a pop can fashioned into a bong. He doesn’t remember if he got high or even enjoyed the experience, but he did start smoking two or three times a week. Marijuana became a way for Savoie to create an identity for himself during those tumultuous high school years, and a way to make friends. His parents disapproved and urged him to quit, but he never abandoned the habit for long. Eventually, his parents stopped trying, contenting themselves with the fact that at least their son wasn’t using harder drugs. “That kind of told me that it’s okay,” says Savoie, who lives in Winnipeg. “So I started using every day.”
By the time he was in university, Savoie was smoking multiple times a day. He’d spark up as soon as he rolled out of bed, as well as before hanging out with friends, before a video game session, before family dinners and before sleep. No matter what he was about to do, Savoie wanted to be high for it. It never occurred to him that he might have a problem. “It was like, ‘You can’t get addicted to weed. It’s the harmless drug,’ ” he recalls.
But after five years of heavy use, Savoie noticed his short-term memory was starting to fray. He avoided talking to people. Worse, festering feelings of anxiety and depression were growing. He tried to mask them with weed, deepening his dependency. He upended his life, quitting his job and breaking up with his girlfriend, trying to find the source of his depression. Nothing worked. “Maybe it’s the drug use,” he recalls thinking, “because I’m constantly relying on it.” For complete article CannabisISAddictive
