In a trend described as shocking, people desperate to obtain narcotics are intentionally injuring their pets to divert and abuse the veterinarian’s painkiller prescriptions. While terribly sad this is no surprise: After all, this is addiction.
narcotics
This was meant purely to be a pre-debate article. But intense interest in the topic propelled it to eclipse 100,000 readers in less than a day -- The Drudge Report made it a front-page post. That's why we're now circulating it to all of our readers. Before she took to the podium, ABC News' George Stephanopoulos said that Hillary Clinton could not afford to have a coughing fit -- and she didn't have one. Maybe her aides read this piece, about how to suppress coughs.
Dr. Josh Bloom on Science 2.0, March 3, 2015
I never know what I'm going to find on the editorial pages of the New York Times. Sometimes I agree with them, and sometimes I don't. But, they usually, at the very least, make sense.
It is no secret that narcotic abuse mostly oxycodone and hydrocodone (the ingredients in Percocet and Vicodin, respectively) is a serious and growing problem in the US. So, leave it to our government the DEA in particular to screw it up more. Except, this time, their actions are certainly going to hurt patients with legitimate needs, and probably do little or nothing to combat the abuse problems. It may even make the problem worse.
If you are suffering from moderate-to-severe pain, you can add one more worry to your list the real possibility is that you will not be able to get effective pain-relieving drugs without considerable effort. And maybe not at all.
In the past few years much attention has been paid to the toxicity of acetaminophen, (the generic name for Tylenol). And with good reason.
What on earth is going on over at the FDA?
Recently, they have been facing some very difficult issues regarding narcotic pain medications. In particular, as pointed out by ACSH s Dr. Josh Bloom in his December 2nd op-ed in The New York Post, they just enacted a rule change that, ostensibly in the interest of combating drug abuse, will make it much more difficult for patients with legitimate need for drugs to control moderate-to-severe pain to get the medicines they need a seriously flawed idea.
It is rare when a bad government policy doesn t come back to bite you. And you better hope that the next time you get bit, it s not too painful, because thanks to the FDA and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) many people are going to have to live with that pain.
When looking at the numbers, about 10 percent of visits to primary care doctors are related to back and neck pain. And we spend about $86 billion a year taking care of this kind of pain. But, according to a new study