Addiction

August 23, 2019

To fight smoking and drug abuse, Uncle Sam will try gross images and screenings

fda3smokewarns-300x166 The U.S. government will try to tackle two of the toughest health care challenges around with new pushes involving graphic imagery and smoking prevention and the encouragement for doctors to screen their adult patients to better detect, avert, and treat drug abuse.

Both initiatives have their soft spots.

But officials say they must act in as many ways as they can. That’s because 480,000 people in the United States die each year from illnesses related to tobacco use, the American Cancer Society reports, adding, “This means each year smoking causes about 1 out of 5 deaths in the US.” Drug abuse and overdoses, meantime, killed more than 68,000 Americans in 2018 alone, exceeding the nation’s peak annual deaths from car crashes, AIDS or guns, the New York Times reported, based on data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

July 31, 2019

Juul denies it’s like Big Tobacco. But it just got caught targeting kids. Again.

by Patrick A. Malone

Juul, the nation’s dominant maker and seller of vaping devices, may want to deny it looks, acts, or models itself after Big Tobacco. A U.S. House subcommittee, however, has caught the San Francisco-based company in one of the prime profit-boosting practices of its health-killing precursor: targeting young users.

Though it insists it neither wants nor has it sought older teens as its customers, Juul spent tens of thousands of dollars and campaigned in recent months with what was purported to be a health education curriculum to reach out to show itself in most favorable fashion to young people in schools, summer camps, and youth programs, House investigators assert.

They told U.S. representatives on the economic and consumer policy subcommittee that they reviewed 55,000 documents to determine that “Juul operated a division that persuaded schools to allow the company to present its programming to students and paid the schools in several instances at least $10,000 to gain access to students during classes, summer school and weekend programs. The effort ended last fall and involved about a half dozen schools and youth program,” the Washington Post reported.

July 23, 2019

As overdose deaths dip, new outrages disclosed on Big Pharma and opioids

by Patrick A. Malone

The nation may be hitting an inflection point in the opioid crisis. But Big Pharma, regulators, and politicians have much to answer for prescription painkillers’ terrible toll and their sluggish efforts to reduce the tens of thousands of casualties.

The spare good news about U.S. drug abuse — the first drop in overdose deaths since 1990 — came from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency also warned its findings were freighted with many “yes, but …” elements, including:

The reported 5% decline occurred in deaths from prescription opioids;

July 9, 2019

53 million Americans suffer ‘second-hand’ harms from booze, study finds

by Patrick A. Malone

Even as the nation grapples with an opioid- and drug-overdose crisis, alcohol, one of the oldest intoxicants known to mankind, causes significant harms, including to as many as a fifth of American grownups who have suffered harm due to drinking by others and not themselves.

A newly published study, based on data from a survey of 8,750 men and women, finds that as many as 53 million American adults experience any of a dozen designated harms due to boozing by others, CNN reported. The injurious actions include: harassment; feeling threatened or afraid; having belongings ruined; having property vandalized; being pushed, hit or assaulted; being physically harmed; being in a traffic accident; being a passenger in a vehicle with a drunk driver; having family or marital problems; and having financial trouble.

Women, the researchers found, are forced to deal with family and marital problems and financial challenges due to alcohol abuse by partners and friends.

July 5, 2019

San Francisco, Beverly Hills blaze new regulatory path with e-cigarette bans

by Patrick A. Malone

Cities are daring to tread where federal regulators have not: They’re cracking down on vaping and its potential harm, particularly to the young, by banning e-cigarettes and tobacco products.

San Francisco supervisors’ e-cigarette ban, recently enacted, packs a symbolic punch because Juul, a “tech startup” whose product has become the market-dominating maker of vaping devices, is headquartered in the city.

Officials not only banned e-cigarette sales, they also decreed that their makers cannot manufacture the devices on municipal property. Juul is unaffected by this action because it is not retroactive, and the company says it does not make its product in its offices, space that is leased from the city on Pier 70.

July 2, 2019

Courts, by too readily sealing records, contributed to opioid crisis, report finds

by Patrick A. Malone

The blame and shame for the opioid-drug overdose crisis that kills tens of thousands Americans annually has moved to yet another set of individuals and institutions now — judges and courts that handled Big Pharma lawsuits and may have been too quick to seal from the public information that would have warned of painkillers’ addictive and lethal characteristics.

Makers’ false claims about opioids and their problematic practices in promoting, selling, and distributing the drugs were hidden, too, in the “pervasive and deadly secrecy that shrouds product-liability cases in U.S. courts, enabled by judges who routinely allow the makers of those products to keep information pertinent to public health and safety under wraps,” Reuters reported.

The news agency dug deep into the judicial practices, finding:

June 23, 2019

Opioid crisis? ‘Not my fault,’ say surgeons and drug maker’s heir

by Patrick A. Malone

As the nation’s opioid and drug overdose crisis deepens, it can be hard to watch as the “Not My Fault” crowd clucks about its blamelessness in pushing potent painkillers that have played a part in killing more Americans in 2016 and 2017 alone than lost their lives in the Vietnam War.

The latest NMF protagonists include:

David Sackler, the outrage-fueling scion of the family that owns Purdue Pharmaceutical, the maker of OxyContin. That drug — and the relentless and inaccurate sales and marketing push that the Sackler family put behind it — helped to foster a calamitous wave of prescription painkiller abuse and addiction, deep media investigations and court cases have shown. OxyContin, in turn, assisted in opening the door to lethal abuses and overdoses of even stronger legal and illicit drugs, including the painkiller fentanyl and street heroin.

June 16, 2019

For Insys, infamy in two opioid crisis firsts: convicted founder and bankruptcy

by Patrick A. Malone

Insys Therapeutics, a drug maker that peddled powerful and addictive painkillers in sordid ways, entered yet another phase of its penalties for its criminal conduct: The firm in quick fashion agreed first to pay $225 million to resolve federal bribery charges, then promptly sought bankruptcy protection.

Federal prosecutors, who earlier had won criminal racketeering convictions against the firm’s CEO and other Insys executives, emphasized that the Big Pharma firm hasn’t declared itself insolvent in its bankruptcy action and will pay up for damages caused by Susbsys, its chief product.

Subsys is a liquid containing the super potent painkiller fentanyl. It is administered as a drop under the tongue and was supposed to benefit cancer patients with grueling pain. Instead, Insys CEO John Kapoor “used speaker’s fees and lap dances to lure doctors into prescribing Subsys for far more patients than the drug was approved for and cheated insurers into covering prescriptions for the costly medication,” the Washington Post reported. Kapoor and other Insys execs await sentencing after their federal felony convictions.

May 14, 2019

Hundreds of moms die of preventable pregnancy-related complications

by Patrick A. Malone

Hundreds of mothers die of preventable pregnancy-related complications up to a year after delivering their babies, with black and native women experiencing notably high maternal morality risks.

The needless deaths of around 700 women nationwide each year due to cardiovascular conditions, infections, hemorrhages and other complications related to their pregnancies underscores the importance of improving maternal care, especially in increasing its access and quality, the federal Centers for Disease Control reported in a new study.

The Washington Post quoted Anne Schuchat, the CDC’s principal deputy director, commenting on the agency data:

May 13, 2019

Wave of hip implant, opioid, talc suits tarnish a famed ‘family’ brand

by Patrick A. Malone

If consumers ever considered Johnson and Johnson just to be a family friendly health brand, the conglomerate’s legal challenges on three fronts—with problematic medical devices and drugs—may disabuse them of warm and fuzzy views.

As Bloomberg News Service reported, J&J will pay $1 billion to try to extricate itself from 95% of 6,000 lawsuits against it over defective metal-on-metal hip implants that not only caused patients great pain but also had to be surgically removed and replaced. The company still must resolve thousands of suits with patients who haven’t had replacement operations or whose implants were only partially metal.

J&J has battled over its Pinnacle implant from its DePuy unit for at least four years, losing sizable cases in Texas to patients who convinced judges and juries that the medical device maker had misled them about their artificial hips’ durability and risks, including assertions that it caused metal poisoning.