Lakeview Health News

Sally J. Finn at the Salvation Army in St Kilda, Melbourne created International Overdose Awareness Day in 2001. Since its inception, it has become a public health movement to raise awareness on drugs and prevention through events held in countries around the world. The message is a simple, but powerful – the tragedy of overdose death is…

Key Issues Addressed By The SUPPORT Act Legislation The SUPPORT Act (Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment for Patients and Communities Act) is a combination of 58 bills passed by the House of Representatives. If it becomes law, we’ll be one step closer to what organizations like the National Association of Treatment…

Today, July 1, 2018, Florida’s new opioid laws for the regulation of the use of prescription opioids went into effect enforcing a three-day limit on most prescriptions and aims to hold the doctors more accountable to avoid reckless prescriptions. This would largely affect patients whose doctors prescribe opioids for acute pain. If a situation arises…

Opioid Epidemic in New England Far from Over New England has been among the hardest-hit regions in the opioid epidemic. The rate of drug overdose deaths in the six northeastern states remains at or above the national average, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some encouraging news for Massachusetts…

Our Response: A Seven-Step Plan for Ending the Opioid Crisis In a recently published article, “A Seven-Step Plan for Ending the Opioid Crisis,” Michael Bloomberg strongly called upon Congress to take serious action in combating the opioid crisis in America. “The opioid crisis is a solvable problem. But to save lives, we need bolder leadership…

Drug Overdose Deaths Rising: It Isn’t About Giving Up One Thing Drug overdose deaths are occurring at record levels in the United States. According to the latest statistics provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), US drug overdose deaths surpassed the 50,000 mark for the first time in 2015, reaching 52,404 fatalities.…

New Jersey Holds Town Hall Meetings on Reorganization of Addiction and Mental Health Services By Michael Rass New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has said the opioid crisis will be his primary focus before he leaves office in January. In his final state-of-the-state address, Christie called that crisis “one that is ripping the very fabric of…

Photo: J. Tesla / CC BY-SA 4.0 What is the Heroin Triangle? In January, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal referred to the drug overdose crisis in his state as “an ongoing epidemic that ravages the hearts and minds of not only individuals but also the communities that they touch.”   The focal point of Georgia’s heroin…

Wisconsin Leads Midwest in Alcohol Misuse and Faces Growing Meth Problem By Michael Rass Like many other states in the Union, Wisconsin has an opioid problem. Governor Scott Walker put it bluntly: “We’ve recently seen opioid use and abuse escalate throughout Wisconsin. The bottom line is this has become an epidemic, and every year we…

A new poll from the National Safety Council (NSC) shows one in three Illinois residents has been directly touched by the opioid epidemic ravaging the nation. Illinoisans may have personally known someone who has become addicted to opioids, known someone who overdosed or died from an overdose or suffered from opioid use disorder themselves. Last…

Photo: MTA New York City Transit / Marc A. Hermann / CC BY 2.0 New York Provides Inexpensive Naloxone to Combat Opioid Epidemic By Michael Rass The New York State Joint Senate Task Force on Heroin and Opioid Addiction reported last year that “virtually no corner of the state has been left untouched by the…

New Pilot Program to Reduce Opioid Deaths in Jacksonville By Michael Rass Fact: Every day, an average of 12 people overdose on heroin or similar drugs in Jacksonville, Florida. The Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department (JFRD) tracks overdose emergency calls. JFRD says in 2015, they had 2,114 overdose victims. In 2016, that number jumped to…

More than 4,600 people died of drug overdoses in Pennsylvania last year, a 37 percent increase from 2015 according to a recent report published by the Philadelphia field division of the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the University of Pittsburgh. Heroin has been replaced by the synthetic opioid fentanyl (and fentanyl-related substances) as the number…

More than 4,100 Ohioans died from accidental drug overdoses in 2016, a 36 percent increase from the year before. On average, eleven Ohioans died each day in 2016 from heroin, fentanyl, carfentanil, or other drugs. The crisis is apparently continuing to escalate. Earlier this year, the Columbus Dispatch contacted the coroner’s offices of all 88…

Photo: Lisa Chamberlain / CC BY-SA 2.0 Ohio has one of the worst addiction problems in the nation. The state has even been called the “face” of the opioid epidemic. Opioid overdose deaths in Ohio increased by an alarming 29 percent in a single year from 2014 to 2015. The crisis shows no signs of…

The Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) released its latest data on opioid overdoses in June. The 2016 Arizona Opioid Report showed the highest number of deaths in the state in ten years. In 2016, 790 Arizonans died from opioid overdoses. The trend shows a startling increase of 74 percent over the past four years.…

Photo: Fran Rogers / CC BY-SA 2.5  Last year, approximately 13 people died each day of a drug-related overdose in Pennsylvania, according to a new report by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the University of Pittsburgh. The state’s fatal overdose rate increased more than 26 percent from 2015 to 2016, accompanied by a 380 percent…

Photo By: Dori / CC BY 2.5 Like other states in the nation, Wisconsin has been struggling with the impact of the opioid addiction crisis on the lives of its residents. Although 63 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties saw a decline or remained the same in the number of opioids prescribed between 2010 and 2015, the…

Texas lost 2,601 people to drug overdoses in 2014, many of them to heroin and other opioid drugs. That year, Dallas County had the second-highest overdose rate for opioids in Texas, after Nueces County. Those are not the only fatalities of the addiction epidemic in Texas and the rest of the nation. Dallas TV station WFAA…

Photo: Don Ramey Logan / CC BY-SA 4.0 Heroin deaths in Miami-Dade reached record level in 2015, with 83 recorded cases. That’s up from 11 in 2011. To deal with the escalating crisis, the county created a task force last December in attempts to formulate a plan for ending the opioid epidemic. The Miami-Dade Opioid…

The number of opioid-related deaths continues to rise in Chicago. In response, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced new plans in July to intensify the city’s efforts to combat the epidemic and increase access to addiction treatment. “The opioid epidemic is destroying families across the United States, and Chicago is no exception,” Emanuel said in a statement.…

Photo: Paul Keleher / CC BY 2.0 Gloucester, the historic fishing city north of Boston, made national headlines in 2015 when it introduced an unprecedented amnesty program that encourages substance users to turn in their drugs to the police without fear of arrest. The hope was that many of the people could be encouraged to…

Photo: Alvesgaspar / CC BY-SA 3.0 A new report from Florida’s medical examiners found that fentanyl overdose caused more deaths than any other drug in Florida in the first six months of 2016. Compared with the first half of 2015, occurrences of fentanyl—the synthetic opioid that killed Prince—nearly doubled, and deaths caused by fentanyl increased by a…

The extremely dangerous opioid carfentanil has been confirmed in Houston prompting immediate protective measures for forensic laboratories, and first responders. According to the Houston Chronicle, a presumed batch of methamphetamine tested by the Houston Forensic Science Center (HFSC) in June was found to contain carfentanil. The world’s most powerful commercial opioid is 10,000 times more…

Photo: Donald Siano / CC BY-SA 3.0 There is new hope for people struggling with substance use disorder in New Jersey’s Union County. They can now give up their drugs and choose recovery without fear of getting arrested through a new initiative meant to alleviate the county’s opioid addiction crisis. “Citizens of Union County battling substance abuse…

Photo by: Ynsalh / CC BY-SA 4.0  Ohio is one of three states comprising the heartland of America’s opioid addiction crisis. In 2015, West Virginia (41.5 per 100,000), Kentucky (29.9), and Ohio (29.9) were among the top five states with the highest rates of death due to drug overdose. Florida—with its own drug abuse epidemic and…

The national opioid addiction crisis has not bypassed communities in northern Texas. In 2014, Dallas County had the second-highest overdose rate from opiate addiction in Texas after Nueces County. The situation in Tarrant County was only marginally better than in neighboring Dallas County. “Heroin and meth made big comebacks in the area recently, and—as elsewhere…

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has dedicated the last year of his term in office to tackling the drug addiction crisis in his state. “Our friends are dying. Our neighbors are dying. Our co-workers are dying. Our children are dying. Every day. In numbers we can no longer ignore,” Christie declared in his state-of-the-state address…

Photo by Esmerelda Jade / CC BY-SA 4.0 Six years after shutting down most of the infamous pill mills, central Florida is going through another killer drug crisis. For many years, Interstate 75 was a notorious conduit for prescription drug trafficking, which earned the route the nickname “Oxy Express.” In hospitals along I-75—which runs from Miami…

The number of daily opioid overdoses in South Florida is overwhelming the police, reported Public Radio International in April. “Delray Beach is at the epicenter of a South Florida overdose epidemic estimated to have claimed more than 900 lives last year. Medical examiners are still counting.” According to official estimates, first responders in Palm Beach…

Photo by Johnathan Zander / CC BY 2.0 Substance use in Florida is on the rise as the national opioid epidemic has claimed thousands of lives in Florida. Earlier this month, Governor Rick Scott officially declared a public health emergency, which allows the state to accept federal grant money for prevention, treatment, and recovery services totaling…

Georgia—like many states across the nation—has seen a dramatic increase of drug overdose fatalities in recent years. As elsewhere in the United States, this trend is mostly driven by the misuse of opioids. Of the 1,307 drug overdose deaths in 2015 in Georgia, 900 (88 percent) were related to opioids, including heroin. A 2017 white…