Where did the candy come from? The case of SweeTarts, Skittles, and Whoppers, an LAPD investigators’ investigation
But there was no candy inside the boxes marked SweeTarts, Skittles, and Whoppers, the sheriff’s department said. Instead, they contained what authorities believe to be thousands of the dangerous pills.
According to the latest data from the CDC, synthetic drugs were involved in more than 50% of overdose deaths. Psychostimulants, such as methamphetamine, were involved in nearly a third.
There were a record number of deaths from drugs in the US in the year. About 66% of those deaths can be attributed to synthetic opioids like fentanyl, according to the agency.
“When we look at the most recent drug fatality data from the [US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], we see more than 81,000 overdose deaths involving opioids in the past 12 months. Now to me, that means there are nearly 81,000 deaths that could have been prevented,” he said. Over 100,000 fatal overdoses are done annually, of which there are significantly more nonfatal overdoses. We also know that experiencing a nonfatal overdose is one of the most important predictors of a future fatal overdose.”
The pills are designed by drug traffickers to drive addiction among kids and young adults, according to the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Last month, the Los Angeles Police Department announced it was investigating multiple overdoses, including one that resulted in a death, at a high school in Hollywood. Investigators said they believe the students bought what they thought were Percocet pills.
Los Angeles Unified School District’s campuses will have a drug used to reverse the effects of overdoses on prescription drugs.
It’s become harder for health officials to respond to drug overdoses due to a lack of accurate, real-time data.
The Biden-Harris Project: Monitoring and Predicting Low-Threshold Heroin Overdoses at EMS First Responders
The site will be updated every two weeks with reports collected at the county level by EMS first responders in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
“We could save tens of thousands of lives if we took more aggressive action,” said Dr. Gupta during a phone call with reporters on Wednesday.
According to Gupta, the website will “provide first responders, clinicians and policy-makers with real-time, actionable information that will improve our responses.”
The stakes for this initiative are high. A study released this year by the medical journal the Lancet predicted the U.S. will see another 1.2 million opioid overdose deaths by the end of this decade.
The website also won’t include information from hospitals, schools, businesses non-profits and academic programs that collect non-fatal overdose information.
If you see a trend that you think is real, you have to make a decision about what to do. You have to make a decision on how to assess the effectiveness of the intervention. It’s useful to have a dataset that spans across time in multiple locations.
There were about 181,806 nonfatal opioid overdoses recorded in the United States in the past year, and it’s taken about 9.8 minutes on average for emergency medical services to reach someone who’s overdosing, according to a data dashboard that the White House debuted Thursday.
It is possible to get more real-time data on the number of overdoses that aren’t fatal, as well as the number of people who need to call for assistance, and to give us a better idea of where the overdoses are more likely to occur.
It shows that as of this week, compared with the national rate of nonfatal overdoses, some of the top cities and counties with rates that are much higher than average, per 100,000 people in their population, are Portsmouth, Virginia; Powell, Kentucky; Philadelphia; Caroll, Kentucky; and Walker, Alabama.
“While we continue to see a flattening in overdose deaths, the Biden-Harris Administration remains focused on getting more people with addiction connected to the care they need, preventing fatal overdoses with naloxone, stopping illicit fentanyl from moving into communities, and going after drug traffickers’ profits through targeted sanctions,” Gupta said.
State officials and clinicians provide nearly 50 million records a year to the National Emergency Medical Services Information System. She said that this trove of data can help us identify areas at risk of overdoses and help us respond before it’s too late.
“This will not tell you about absolute numbers. This will not tell you clinical findings,” Boyer said of the new system, but national trends could emerge that can help health officials plan their response efforts to the opioid epidemic.
There are three bills floating through congress that could save lives and money by finally dismantling the nation’s failed war on drugs. The Medicaid Re-entry Act, EQUAL (Eliminating a Quantifiably Unjust Application of the Law) Act and the MAT (Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment) Act all have bipartisan support and could be passed during the lame duck session of Congress. Lawmakers should act on them without delay.
There are several reasons for that, including stigma and a lack of understanding about how medications for opioid use disorder work. Only a fraction of doctors are willing to treat addiction in the first place. Dropping the D.E.A. waiver will not be enough to alleviate that shortage; lawmakers will also have to find ways to ensure that addiction treatment enjoys the same robust reimbursement rates as other chronic conditions. Eliminating the waivers is still a crucial step in the right direction. The prescription drugs that caused the current epidemic should not be easier to access than the medications that could help alleviate it.
Comments on Tonko’s MAT Act and the Drug-Free Use of Pentanyl and Methamphetamine in the United States
The MAT Act, which was written by Representative Paul Tonko of New York, boasts some 248 co-sponsors and has already passed the House as part of a broader mental health package.
Fentanyl and methamphetamine are often found in combination with other drugs, including cocaine and heroin, according to a statement from Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
The statement also highlights that hundreds of thousands of pounds of illicit drugs had been seized both domestically and by US Customs and Border Protection.