A friend shared this obituary with me today. I don't know anything about Maddie beyond what's shared in her obituary, but it's has to be the most beautifully written obituary I've ever seen. Addiction afflicts beautiful, good people and it sounds like she was one of them. It is impossible to capture a person in … Continue reading praying, rooting, empathy, support, compassion and respect

Framing the national drug problem around opioids misses the bigger target. The future of the national drug problem is more drugs used by more drug users – not simply prescription misuse or even opioids but instead globally produced illegal synthetic drugs as is now common in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. A focus exclusively on … Continue reading Sentences to ponder

“Vancouver is a city with a lot of harm-reduction tools in its tool box and, still, we’ve barely slowed the wave of overdoses,” Mr. Robertson said. Mr. Robertson is Vancouver's outgoing mayor. He reflected on his experience managing the city through the opioid crisis. Number of times the article mentions recovery = 0 Number of times … Continue reading Sentences to ponder

No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up. —Lily Tomlin From the Financial Times: A billionaire pharmaceuticals executive who has been blamed for spurring the US opioid crisis stands to profit from the epidemic after he patented a new treatment for drug addicts. Richard Sackler, whose family owns Purdue Pharma, the … Continue reading No matter how cynical you become . . .

UPDATE: looks like this study has been retracted. I'll post more, when I know more about why. UPDATE 2: German Lopez has an update here. A new meta-analysis of research on supervised injection sites delivers some disappointing conclusions for advocates: One of the aims of MSICs (Medically Supervised Injection Centres) is to reduce harms associated … Continue reading New study casts doubt about injection site effectiveness

So, the other night I posted about cash-only buprenorphine practices. The next morning I find this in my mail. Consulting services to help establish turn-key buprenorphine clinics with cash revenue models that use toxicology services to generate revenue and provide aggressive risk management. (It's worth noting that I also get emails about treatment valuation conferences/services … Continue reading The treatment hustle behind the scenes

Apparently, twitter-bots are targeting more than elections: Social media accounts run by internet robots may be driving much of the discussion around the health threats posed by e-cigarettes, according to a study led by San Diego State University researchers, who also found most of the automated messages were positive toward vaping. More than 70 percent … Continue reading Vaping draws strong support — from bots

Outside of very rural areas, I've often scratched my head when advocates express concern about access to buprenorphine. I mean, there are a lot of prescribers in most areas. I had a conversation yesterday that prompted a google search that led me to this. (OBT refers to office-based treatment with buprenorphine.) Access to OBT in … Continue reading Cash only

Reckitt Benckiser and Invidor, the manufacturers of Suboxone are back in the news. The Justice Department in filings last week in federal court in Abingdon, Virginia, said it was intervening in four separate whistleblower lawsuits related to the Britain-based companies’ marketing of Suboxone and the related drug Subutex. . . . Among the complaints unsealed … Continue reading U.S. joins lawsuits against manufacturers over drug Suboxone

The FDA issued a new set of draft guidelines for pharmaceutical manufacturers the presents what has previously been referred to as "alternative endpoints." I posted about this in March. Here's that previous post. "alternative endpoints"?  I caught a few minutes of the White House opioid summit yesterday and the phrase "alternative endpoints" caught my attention. … Continue reading Alternative endpoints