Proposed guidelines for physicians from the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force recommend screening everyone over the age of 18 for drug use. Mind you, that's without having evidence of benefit or harm. Can the reasoning "it can't hurt" be an acceptable justification for the move?
drug abuse
How often do you hear of someone using their spouse's antibiotic from a prior illness? Or, dispensing an Ambien to a colleague or friend? For those practicing medicine without a license in person, or through social media crowdsourcing, the harms can be considerable.
Self-injury mortality, albeit by suicide or lethal intoxication, spans a continuum that represents two sides of the same coin.
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.
With the opioid epidemic occupying center stage in media and political arenas, what's gone largely overlooked is that pediatric opioid-related hospitalizations, warranting the highest level of intensive care unit admission, doubled between 2004 and 2015.
The overdose epidemic sweeping the nation is hitting some demographics harder than others. Heroin overdose deaths began to skyrocket in 2010. New data shows that of all groups, older millennials, those aged 25-34, are the likeliest to die from a heroin overdose.
A recent study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, claims the cost-effectiveness of providing pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to individuals who engage in injected drug use. Outside of a controlled clinical setting, however, this would not be a wise public health choice.
Needle exchange programs where addicts can exchange dirty syringes for clean ones are effective in preventing the spread of HIV, a finding that's highlighted in a new CDC report. But in terms of curbing the overall drug abuse problem, the programs themselves remain controversial.
If there's anything we could use in the U.S., when it comes to the so-called 'War on Drugs," is a better way to fight it, an ongoing battle that sometimes seems hopeless. But research is underway, with three papers appearing simultaneously focusing on probing the mechanisms of cravings in the brain.
It is hardly news when partygoers end up in the emergency room from an overdose of methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), aka ecstasy (and a whole bunch of other names, such as Molly, E, X, many others).
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.
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.