Stop Oxy

SCOTUS Sides With Pill Mill Doctors On Controlled Substances Act

Post author:Melissa
Post published:June 28, 2022
Post category:oxycontin epidemic pill mill
Reading time:3 mins read

A ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States found that doctors who mis-prescribe or overprescribed opioids must have done so purposefully to be criminally charged. Many doctors who have been charged during the opioid crisis have been accused of being “pill mills” and cranking out prescriptions almost maliciously. But if the doctors didn’t know or purposefully violated the Controlled Substances Act, they should not be charged, wrote Justice Breyer in the SCOTUS ruling.

The Opioid Cases That Made The Decision

Two different doctors had their cases kicked up to the Supreme Court, both of them facing over 20 years in prison and claiming their prescriptions for patients were written in good faith. Both doctors faced claims that they were writing prescriptions to help people with legitimate pain. They did not know they were addicting people and didn’t realize …

Fentanyl Overdoses Among The Young Are Killing

Post author:Melissa
Post published:May 23, 2022
Post category:fentanyl fentanyl epidemic
Reading time:3 mins read

Young people are getting back together in real life, and with that socializing comes new experiences. Kids are being kids, pushing boundaries, partying, and rebelling. Snapchat, TikTok, and other apps put things like Molly pills and other club drugs in their hands overnight. Many of the drug dealers drop off packages in mailboxes at night. And the drug users, aged as young as fourteen or as old as in their 30s, don’t have the experience or know-how to test their drugs for fentanyl. And due to their lack of opioid exposure, this leads to overdoses – and death. Teens and young adults are overdosing at record rates.

Why Are Drugs Tainted With Fentanyl?

Nobody knows just one reason for drugs being tainted with fentanyl. Often the powder for club drugs and opioids comes from overseas. Drug dealers may mix the …

Pain Management Intervention Reduces Opioid Use

Post author:Melissa
Post published:April 29, 2022
Post category:prescription drugs
Reading time:2 mins read

According to a study on a hospital intervention program for people with thyroid cancer operations, preoperative counseling and having multiple ways to control pain reduced the amount of opioids patients needed. Post-operative opioid prescriptions were dramatically reduced among many thyroid cancer patients discharged. Because of personalized medication management, fewer people took opioids home from the hospital.

Supporting Patients’ Pain Management Individual Needs

The study’s findings were retrospective and focused on thyroid cancer surgery. The study showed that hospitalized people needed very small amounts of postoperative opioid medication for pain management. The authors wrote that offering multiple types of pain management helped manage pain. “Adequate postoperative pain control was achieved using non-opioid interventions. Implementing an intervention to decrease the quantity of unnecessarily prescribed opioid medications during hospital discharge may help to reduce the risk of opioid addiction and overdose in patients …

Fentanyl Is The Leading Cause Of Death Among Young And Middle-Aged Adults

Post author:Melissa
Post published:March 28, 2022
Post category:fentanyl epidemic
Reading time:2 mins read

For adults aged 18-45, fentanyl is the most common cause of death in the United States of America, according to new data from the CDC. The deaths outnumbered car wrecks, alcohol-related deaths (which also increased), and cancer. Fentanyl is here to stay, and it’s killing young people. Why is it the leading cause of death? What can people do to help prevent these deaths, individuals, or communities?

Fentanyl Is Often An Adulterant

Many people who overdose on fentanyl have no idea they are taking it. This may sound like an exaggeration, but it’s true. Fentanyl has been found as an adulterant on both the East and the West Coast. It’s been added to cocaine, meth, molly, and opioid pills sold as Oxy.

There has even been a case of fentanyl added to black-market marijuana in California.

It’s not clear …

Biden Allocates $30 Million To Harm Reduction Efforts

Post author:Melissa
Post published:February 16, 2022
Post category:U.S. government
Reading time:3 mins read

The Department of Health and Human Services recently announced a federal grant focused on community-based harm reduction services, supporting groups that help provide Naloxone and other vital tools to people with substance use disorder.

The grant, funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), is the first of its kind. Conservatives have been skeptical of the usefulness of harm reduction efforts. The funds, meant to help prevent overdoses and needle-spread diseases, have come under scrutiny almost as soon as they were announced. There is still much stigma and misunderstanding surrounding addiction and recovery.

What Is Harm Reduction?

Typically, harm reduction efforts are focused on the deadliest drugs, such as fentanyl and heroin. When targeting opioid users, the focus is on preventing death and disease. Some efforts, like needle exchange programs, have been around for ages. Unfortunately, many …

Alaska Doctor Wrote 20,000 Opioid Scripts Causing 5 Deaths

Post author:Melissa
Post published:January 21, 2022
Post category:doctors pill mill
Reading time:2 mins read

A doctor located in Alaska wrote over 20,000 opioid prescriptions in six years. 64-year-old David Chisholm pleaded guilty last June to unlawful dispensing and distributing a controlled substance. He has now been sentenced to nearly three years in prison. After that, he will spend 34 months in jail. He can no longer practice medicine in the State of Alaska. He will also be required to pay $25,000 in restitution.

The illegally prescribed opioids, prosecutors said, resulted in the deaths of five patients.

Illegally Prescribing Potent Opioids

Chisholm is accused of operating a “pill mill” of sorts when he illegally prescribed patients thousands of opioid pills out of his private practice, Camelot Family Health Clinic in Wasilla, Alaska. As a result, people could go to him to get a variety of opioids, including oxycodone, hydrocodone, morphine, and fentanyl.

Wasilla is …

New York Jury Finds Teva Liable For Opioid Epidemic

Post author:Melissa
Post published:December 30, 2021
Post category:fentanyl
Reading time:2 mins read

A jury in Suffolk County, New York, found Teva Pharmaceutical liable for their role in the opioid epidemic, alongside a long list of other companies involved in the trade. Teva makes powerful pain medications using the powerful opioid fentanyl.

In fact, between April 2020 and April 2021, overdose deaths from opioids totaled over 75,000, an increase of nearly 25,000. Most of those deaths involved fentanyl, a drug almost 50 times as potent as heroin.

What Teva Pharmaceutical Did

A Suffolk County jury decided that Teva played a role in what is legally termed a “public nuisance.” The nuisance, however, also involved over 500,00 deaths in the past twenty years.

Most of the charges related to the promotion and marketing of fentanyl, which is similar to what the makers of Oxycontin were convicted of in recent years.

Teva is known …

The Opioid Epidemic Impacts the Film and TV Industry

Post author:Mike H
Post published:December 27, 2021
Post category:opiate opiate addiction opioid
Reading time:5 mins read

The opioid epidemic’s human toll has now become well-known, and in 2021 it’s been more prominently shown on television than ever before.

OxyContin was a central theme in Hulu’s Dopesick Hulu’s Dopesick, as well as several other episodes, such as HBO’s Mare of Easttown, AMC’s Kevin Can F*** Himself, and Showtime’s Dexter: New Blood and American Rust, which dealt with opiate addiction.

With their widespread use, opiates appeared in everything from a suspenseful murder investigation to a darkly humorous parody of old-school comedies.

How the Opioid Crisis Has Been Portrayed

Kaitlyn Dever, who plays Betsy Mallum in the show Dopesick, said she was aware of the situation but didn’t know much about the circumstances. After suffering an accident on the job, her coal miner character develops an addiction to OxyContin. She added that she was …

Washington DC Sees Overdoses From New, Potent Opioids

Post author:Melissa
Post published:December 1, 2021
Post category:opiate addiction
Reading time:2 mins read

Opioids that are stronger than the deadly drug fentanyl are the cause of a spate of overdoses in Washington DC. The drugs, called protonitazene and isotonitazene, were found to be several times more potent than fentanyl. Fentanyl has been responsible for a series of overdose deaths in the past two years. Fentanyl is said to be over one hundred times as strong as morphine. For inexperienced users, exposure or use results in deadly overdoses.

These new drugs, called nitazenes, are passed off as other opioids, are even more potent, and likely cause an overdose.

Who Found These Nitazenes?

The District of Columbia has a lab that frequently monitors the contents of drugs anonymously.

“The DFS Public Health Lab discovered two nitazenes — synthetic opioids — in used syringes submitted to the lab as part of the District’s Needle …

Cherokee Nation Gets 75$ Million Of Opioid Settlement Money

Post author:Melissa
Post published:October 14, 2021
Post category:big pharma
Reading time:2 mins read

The Cherokee Nation has accepted a settlement of 75 million dollars from three of the nation’s largest drug distributors, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson. The money is a settlement from a lawsuit that accused the companies of shipping large quantities of highly addictive pain pills for over 20 years, propelling the opioid crisis and creating a public health emergency for communities across the country.

The settlement is the first of its kind to give money to Native American communities, whose populations, leaders say, are disproportionately affected by the opioid crisis.

The Settlement Money Will Go To Healing

“This settlement will enable us to increase our investments in mental health treatment facilities and other programs to help our people recover,” Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. told reporters.

The settlement will fund much-needed treatment and mental health services for …