From a press release about newly published research. The title of the press release is Fentanyl overdose survivors require little if any hospital treatment "Our protocol should give emergency physicians and nurses the confidence to allocate the appropriate resources to the patients who truly need them, especially when there is a wave of fentanyl overdoses … Continue reading “safely discharged”?

MedPage Today reports on a recent NIH, NIDA, HHS press briefing. HHS Secretary Alex Azar, JD, NIH Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, and Nora Volkow, MD, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) pitched the president's opioid initiative to reporters during a press briefing on Wednesday afternoon. So, how did they describe their … Continue reading Pharma, Pharma, Pharma

From the New York Times: It was going to be a study that could change the American diet, a huge clinical trial that might well deliver all the medical evidence needed to recommend a daily alcoholic drink as part of a healthy lifestyle. That was how two prominent scientists and a senior federal health official … Continue reading Buying an evidence-base?

From Stat: . . . a controversial new working paper has raised the question of whether the urgent push to expand naloxone access may be doing more harm than good. The paper, published online last week, aimed to estimate the changes in behavior resulting from expanded naloxone access. Researchers found that after states passed naloxone … Continue reading Naloxone a moral hazard?

From CNN: The CNN/Harvard analysis looked at 2014 and 2015, during which time more than 811,000 doctors wrote prescriptions to Medicare patients. Of those, nearly half wrote at least one prescription for opioids. Fifty-four percent of those doctors -- more than 200,000 physicians -- received a payment from pharmaceutical companies that make opioids. Doctors were … Continue reading “The correlation you found is very powerful”

The Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment just published a study examining outcomes for 12 step groups and Lifering, Women for Sobriety (WFS), and SMART Recovery. The researchers described their findings this way: The present study contributes the first longitudinal, comparative data on 12-step groups and the largest secular, abstinence-based alternatives available in the U.S.: WFS, … Continue reading Mutual aid works, whether it’s 12 step, Lifering, SMART or WFS

I caught a few minutes of the White House opioid summit yesterday and the phrase "alternative endpoints" caught my attention. That's Alex Azar speaking. He's the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Here's what he said [emphasis mine]: At the NGA (National Governors Association) we also highlighted two forthcoming Food and Drug Administration guidances that … Continue reading “alternative endpoints”?

This headline is from the Kaiser Health News Morning Brief. So much better than the last couple of headlines I shared.

Another day, another troubling headline. If you believe that the access to "safer" drugs is the problem, maybe vending machines will "fix Vancouver’s drug crisis." For more than a decade, we've been told that Vancouver is the model the US should emulate. No North American city has been more aggressive in implementing harm reduction practices—safe … Continue reading “You get used to it pretty quickly”