https://www.doximity.com/doc_news/v2/entries/11034750

I spoke with a pharmacist the other day who told me her job was messing up her life.

Her favorite pharmacy tech was being transferred to another location, and she was convinced that her manager didn’t understand the implications for her or the pharmacy.

Pharmacists, especially those in a retail setting, are feeling the pressure. Burnout is happening at higher and higher rates and the result is low productivity and high turnover. Pharmacists in any community setting will confirm they are incredibly busy, extremely distracted, and they often don’t have time to take a break or even use the bathroom. The long-term result is a loss of talent.

In the face of these circumstances, some businesses callously suggest that the pharmacists themselves carry the blame for burnout because they don’t handle pressure well.

To me, that thought is appalling. I would argue that if you put any pharmacist in a community store with a requirement to fill more than 400 prescriptions a day with the help of only one pharmacy tech, over the span of 5, 10, 20, or 30 years, you will create a burned-out pharmacist.

It’s worth mentioning, too, that these pharmacists successfully completed the PharmD degree, which requires 4 years of stressful professional work in addition to the undergraduate requirements. It’s a huge accomplishment, and that level of perseverance suggests that working in a pharmacy should be no problem for pharmacists.

Unfortunately, I would argue that it’s the work environment that has created burnout in more than 50% of practicing pharmacists. There are exceptions to this, of course, but it isn’t a certain niche of pharmacy that is experiencing the burnout. It’s the profession as a whole.

1. Distractions

Beth Lofgren wrote a piece for Pharmacy Times about how many times she was distracted in a single day while working in a hospital setting. She recorded more than 150 distractions in one day, including ringing phones, personal conversations, busy doorways, background music, and out-of-stock medications.

In fact, a University of California study found that it takes workers an average of 25 minutes to return to an original task after distraction.

Unfortunately, pharmacists are barraged with distractions. Within the health care industry, they may have the most distracting job of all. The danger, of course, is that distraction can cause fatigue, and fatigue can reduce efficiency, resulting in a failure to complete all the day’s requirements.

2. Constant Multitasking

Think of multitasking as a single drop of water falling on a rock. One drop of water will leave no visible marks on the stone, but hundreds of drops a week will eventually wear a hole in the rock. In the same way, multiple distractions in a day lead to decision fatigue: a deteriorating quality of decisions that results from long sessions of decision-making. In the wake of such fatigue, simple decisions such as what to eat for dinner become overwhelming.

David Meyer, in a University of Michigan study, found that switching tasks midstream increases the time required to finish both tasks by 25%.

Furthermore, a study in England revealed that task-switching in pharmacies can lead to dispensing errors, which affects both pharmacist and patient.

The multitasking problem is a system issue rather than a personal issue, and it leads to pharmacist burnout.

3. High Demands and Insufficient Time

Pharmacists constantly tell me they are being asked to do more work with fewer resources. Stated another way, they don’t know how to meet their managers’ demands because they haven’t been given the means to do so.

Pharmacists have extremely high demands on their time and their decisions. The priorities in one day often exceed the time needed to complete them, so sometimes high-priority tasks are neglected for lower-priority tasks. The result could mean compromised patient care.

4. Lack of Training

Pharmacists on the front lines are often told what to do by management without being given a viable plan of action. One pharmacist told me she had more cases than she could humanly handle within one day. With no plan of action, it was impossible to do all that was required of her.

As a result, she was constantly behind in her work and fearful of losing her job.

5. Lack of Connection to Company

I’ve never met a single pharmacist who absolutely loved his company: a pharmacist who was able to state the company’s vision statement and core values. I know they exist, but there aren’t many of them.

Pharmacists who don’t feel connected to their company often feel alienated from the company’s larger purpose. They aren’t able to identify with the company’s larger, altruistic mission and they aren’t able to see how they fit within that purpose. Without that purpose for their job, they feel distant, which ultimately leads to a negative company culture.

What Burnout Feels Like

Can you blame pharmacists for being negative at work? There are numerous demands on their time and countless ways for them to feel as though they are failing. They feel naturally pessimistic. They are frequently yelled at by patients, doctors, nurses, and managers. They never win and they never feel as though they can get ahead. Pharmacists are victim to an endless raid on their attention and ultimately, they feel trapped.

Independent pharmacists .. the pt is their BOSS… they don’t have a whole ladder of supervisors and management… they also do have all the expensive of supporting all of that infrastructure.  Most will instead invest in ancillary staffing and the best ancillary automation… all  of that means is that they are able to provide better customer service both in regards to prompt and personal service.

Here is a website that can help you locate a independent by zip code http://www.ncpanet.org/home/find-your-local-pharmacy

most accept most insurances and your out of pocket copays are generally the same, and on top of that… these locally owned stores all the money stays in YOUR COMMUNITY.

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https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/63664/scientists-blast-fda-warn-that-a-ban-on-kratom-would-cause-more-opioid.html

The United States Food and Drug Administration ramped up its “War on Kratom” this week by labeling the natural herb as an opioid, and a group of scientists is stepping up to vouch for kratom’s safety, and to argue that banning it would only lead to more opioid-related deaths.

In a statement, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb warned that there is “even stronger evidence of kratom compounds’ opioid properties.” He claimed that there is evidence of 36 deaths related to kratom, but that “many of the cases received could not be fully assessed because of limited information provided.”

In response, a group of scientists came together to send a letter to the acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Robert Patterson; and the counselor to the president who is overseeing the administration’s response to the opioid crisis, Kellyanne Conway.

The letter strongly criticized the FDA’s recommendation to label kratom as a Schedule I drug, which would mean that the government will claim that it has no medicinal value.

“We believe strongly that the current body of credible research on the actual effects of kratom demonstrates that it is not dangerously addictive, nor is it similar to ‘narcotics like opioids’ with respect to ‘addiction’ and ‘death’ as stated by the FDA in its November 14th Kratom Advisory. Equally important, four surveys indicate that kratom is presently serving as a lifeline away from strong, often dangerous opioids for many of the several million Americans who use kratom. A ban on kratom that would be imposed by CSA Scheduling would put them at risk of relapse to opioid use with the potential consequence of overdose death. Similar unintended consequences are to be expected in some who would be forced to use opioids to manage acute or chronic pain.”

The scientists noted that when kratom is consumed in raw plant form, “it does not appear to produce the highly addictive euphoria or lethal respiratory depressing effects of classical opioids.” In fact, they argued that labeling kratom as a Schedule I drug would actually increase the number of opioid-related deaths in the United States.

“It is our collective judgment that placing kratom into Schedule I will potentially increase the number of deaths of Americans caused by opioids because many people who have found kratom to be their lifeline away from strong opioids will be vulnerable to resumption of that opioid use, whether their prior opioid use was for relief of pain or due to opioid addiction,” the scientists wrote.

The letter cited several national surveys and a wealth of studies from both the U.S. and Asia, which found that “kratom has been used as a safer alternative to opioids for more than a century,” and if the government truly cared about the safety of the consumer, they would refrain from making kratom a Schedule I drug.

Although the FDA is claiming that kratom is responsible for at least 44 deaths, that is nothing when compared to the number of deaths that have occurred from opioid overdoses in recent years. As President Trump noted at his first State of the Union address, “In 2016, we lost 64,000 Americans to drug overdoses: 174 deaths per day. Seven per hour.”

However, the scientists questioned whether the FDA could actually prove that the deaths it cited were related to kratom overdoses. They noted that while opioid overdose deaths result from respiratory depression and death at high doses, the deaths the FDA claims are from kratom overdoses include “a wide variety of apparent causes in people suffering from various diseases and/or taking other substances that also likely contributed to their deaths.”

Why is the FDA pushing to ban kratom when research has shown that not only is it a safer alternative to opioids, but that it actually helps to prevent opioid-overdose deaths?

As The Free Thought Project has reported, by pushing for a ban on kratom, the FDA is ensuring that Big Pharma will have a lifetime of profit, and the commissioner of the FDA is directly responsible:

Before taking over the FDA and using his position to enrich his fellow legal drug dealers, Gottlieb was a member of GlaxoSmithKline’s product investment board. And, as TFTP has previously reported GlaxoSmithKline owns a patent on a kratom alkaloid designed for the very purpose of treating pain, thereby alleviating dependency on opioids. One of Kratom’s alkaloids—Speciofoline—was researched decades ago by Gottlieb’s former employer and its effects have been widely studied and reported on.

It just so happens that a patent was filed for Speciofoline on August 10, 1964. The patent claims the “alkaloid has useful pharmacodynamic activity, particularly analgetic and antitussive activity.” But that’s not all. Other studies—which the FDA says do not exist—have been conducted for the specific task of treating opioid dependency.

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http://www.foxnews.com/health/2018/02/08/many-people-take-dangerously-high-amounts-ibuprofen.html

Many adults who use ibuprofen and other so-called nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) drugs take too much, increasing their risk of serious side effects like internal bleeding and heart attacks, a U.S. study suggests.

About 15 percent of adults taking ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil) or other NSAIDs like aspirin, naproxen (Aleve), celecoxib (Celebrex), meloxicam (Mobic) and diclofenac (Voltaren) exceeded the maximum recommended daily dose for these drugs, the study found.

“NSAIDs are among the most commonly used medicines in the U.S. and worldwide,” said lead study author Dr. David Kaufman of Boston University.

“These drugs can have serious side effects, including gastrointestinal bleeding and heart attacks, and are often taken without medical oversight because many products are available over-the-counter,” Kaufman said by email. “The attitude that users can choose their own dose regardless of label directions, along with poor knowledge of dosing limits, is associated with exceeding the daily limit.”

For the study, 1,326 people who reported taking ibuprofen in the previous month completed online medication diaries every day for one week.

All of the participants took ibuprofen during the diary week, and 87 percent of them only used over-the-counter, or nonprescription, versions, researchers report in Pharmacoepidemiology & Drug Safety.

Overall, 55 percent of participants took ibuprofen at least three days during the week, and 16 percent took it every day.

In addition to ibuprofen, 37 percent of the participants reported taking at least one other NSAID during the week, most often aspirin or naproxen. Less than half of them recognized that all of the products they were taking were NSAIDs.

One limitation of the study is that researchers only focused on recent and current ibuprofen users, which may not reflect what doses might be typical for sporadic or new users, the authors note.

Even so, the findings highlight a potential downside of making NSAIDs widely available without a prescription, said Dr. Gunnar Gislason, director of research for the Danish Heart Foundation in Cophenhagen.

“I believe that the message sent to the consumer when these drugs are widely available in convenience stores and gas stations is that these drugs are safe and you can use them safely for pain relief – thus no need for reading the label,” Gislason, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

Even when people do read the label, they may still ignore it.

“If the recommended dosage does not give sufficient pain relief, it is easier to take more pills than seeking professional advice from a healthcare person or doctor,” Gislason added.

While doctors may prescribe NSAIDs for some muscle and joint disorders and certain other health problems, these drugs aren’t appropriate for many of the reasons that patients may buy them at the drugstore, said Dr. Liffert Vogt of the Academic Medical Center at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

“In my opinion NSAIDs should not be available as an over-the-counter drug, because of all their deleterious effects,” Vogt, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

“For occasional use, acetaminophen (again in the right dose) is a much safer option and very efficacious as a pain killer,” Vogt added. “But we know that many people use NSAIDs for indications other than pain, such as flu, allergies, fever – and there is no medical base that indicates that NSAIDs or acetaminophen are of any use under these circumstances.”

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Lawsuit: Clinics wrote thousands of fraudulent addiction drug prescriptions

The lawsuit alleges that The Recovery Center and four of its owners defrauded Medicaid by claiming it offered patients medical advice

https://www.ems1.com/addiction/articles/375129048-Lawsuit-Clinics-wrote-thousands-of-fraudulent-addiction-drug-prescriptions/

BREATHITT COUNTY, Ky. — A clinic with locations in Central and Eastern Kentucky improperly prescribed thousands of doses of a drug designed to help treat people addicted to opioids such as heroin and pain pills, Attorney General Andy Beshear’s office charged in a lawsuit filed Friday.

The lawsuit alleges that The Recovery Center, which is based in Breathitt County, and four of its owners defrauded the Medicaid program by falsely claiming it offered patients required medical advice and individual treatment along with prescriptions for Suboxone.

The lawsuit seeks to recover money from The Recovery Center received under the Medicaid program, as well as fines and other financial damages.

Beshear said his office recently raided four clinics operated by the business and that a criminal investigation is underway.

Clinics can qualify for Medicaid payments for providing medication-assisted addiction treatment. Suboxone, which combats cravings for opioid drugs, is widely used in such treatment.

However, clinics are supposed to provide individual treatment that includes steps to reduce a patients’ use of Suboxone over time, Beshear said in a news release.

The Recovery Center was billing Medicaid for spending 15 minutes with each patient, but that was “mathematically impossible” given the number of doctors in its clinics, Beshear said.

For example, the lawsuit alleges that on one day in 2017 at the Recovery Center clinic in Jackson, the owners wrote 136 Suboxone prescriptions, all for the same dosage amount.

The Recovery Center has clinics in Jackson, Hazard, London, Paintsville, Frankfort, Richmond and Mount Sterling, Beshear said.

Beshear called the clinics “pill mills.”

“The owners are strictly operating for profits and couldn’t care less about the health and safety of our families and neighbors who are struggling with addiction,” Beshear said in a news release.

Beshear’s office filed the lawsuit in Breathitt County against the business and the owners — Dr. George Burnette, Jerry Campbell, Justin Neace and Robert Jack Duncan.

No one returned a telephone message left at a number listed for the clinic in Jackson.

The lawsuit charges that The Recovery Center billed Medicaid for services that were not provided or were not needed. It required unnecessary weekly appointments and drug screens, and unneeded prescriptions led to the state “being flooded with thousands of dangerous and addictive doses of Suboxone that were subject to abuse and diversion.”

Beshear said his office has been reviewing a trend in the abuse of Buprenorphine medications — Suboxone is one — by clinics that prescribe them without the necessary counseling and treatment. There is a black market for the drug.

“Now we are seeing a treatment for addiction being the cause of addiction due to the reckless behavior of clinic owners like those who run The Recovery Center,” Beshear said in the release.

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Hi Steve! My name is xxxx.xxxxx and my attorney recommended that I reach out to you. I have had a horrific traumatizing experience recently with a Walgreens pharmacist. This went beyond refusal to fill a prescription and the pharmacist actually edited my Walgreens profile as well as flag my prescription. I have been using a different Walgreens consistently for 2+ years and seeing the same doctor who writes these prescriptions for me. However my local Walgreens was out of two of the three medications I desperately needed and recommended I take my prescriptions to a different Walgreens, one that had what I needed in stock. Needless to say this turned into a nightmare, total humiliation and shame and I literally feel like I was criminalized by this pharmacist. Again my situation goes way past refusal to fill a much needed prescription. This particular pharmacist became vindictive and I believe crossed a line most certainly of ethical duty but possibly a legal one. I know this because after spending several hours going back and forth and going to a third Walgreens pharmacy after her refusal , I was treated horribly. I then returned to my pharmacy in tears and pain and my pharmacist was dumbfounded at how I was treated. When she went into the computer to see why my prescription was flagged, she was irate at what she saw. She was not surprised when I told her the other pharmacists name that treated me so badly but she was very surprised to see what she had done to my Walgreens profile. I am angry at myself for not getting the specifics in that moment but as I said earlier it was a long day and I was in so much pain. I do know for a fact that my two pharmacists could not apologize enough about what transpired and could not wrap their heads about this others pharmacists negative actions against me. I believe they said not only did she flag the script as a possible non valid prescription, she proceeded to alter my profile or erase it including the icd-9 or 10 codes that were established. Off the record my pharmacist insisted I speak to corporate and the district manager and file a complaint with the California board of pharmacist. Needless to say that I still have not received all my medications as my Walgreens has been unable to obtain one of the meds and on top of my many pre-existing issues I was involved in a pretty severe riding accident 3 days prior to this experience where I was thrown off a quad going about 30 miles per hour and thrown 3-4feet in the air before landing very hard on hard sand on my left side.needless to say I really damaged my left shoulder and arm and still have little to zero mobility of my left side. I would so appreciate talking with you if possible because i wanted to not send a novel with some of the important details regarding this but wanted to at least send you a summary and hope to get your attention with this so we can then speak further .I am determined if nothing else, to see some serious consequences for this pharmacist and if In fact her actions against me are illegal then I plan on pursuing legal action. Also just another fact in this, I actually work in the field of mental health and substance abuse and have done so for the last 8 years. I was an integral part of developing and launching the first two free standing detoxes in San Diego. I have my own small company and have been self employed for approximately 3 years. I am very well known and respected in this field and because of that this is a very sensitive issue for me. Although all my colleagues know that I am not a person in recovery or have struggled with addiction issues, I try to keep this very private for several reasons .

Our country has a serious – and growing – Pharmacist surplus.. so if any chain is not happy with the attitude or the way one of their employed pharmacist treats pts.. they could replace them in a heart beat… but .. apparently chose not to.  They all claim how much they care about pts… maybe many of their employees have not read that memo..

Here is a link where pts can find local independent pharmacies where you will be dealing with the owner/pharmacist… who use “good customer service” as the reason people keep returning to patronize their pharmacy. http://www.ncpanet.org/home/find-your-local-pharmacy

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https://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/article199479559.html

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Indiana family sues DCS after they allegedly tried to take daughter for CBD treatment

www.fox59.com/2018/02/09/indiana-family-sues-dcs-after-they-allegedly-tried-to-take-daughter-for-cbd-treatment/

EVANSVILLE, Ind. – A southern Indiana family has filed a lawsuit against two Department of Child Services (DCS) workers who allegedly tried to take their daughter away following cannabidiol (CBD) oil treatment for her seizures.

The story started last year, when Jade and Lelah Jerger started using CBD oil instead of the pharmaceutical drug Keppra to treat their daughter’s epilepsy. You can find artisan CBD flower in some parts of the country.

The couple says Jaelah Jerger saw a 95 percent reduction in seizures with the CBD oil. When doctors at Riley Hospital for Children at IU Heath found out she wasn’t using the prescription, the family says the hospital alerted DCS, who paid them a visit and threatened to take their daughter away.

DCS said doctors told them child was neglected and in danger.

“The worst week ever. It was terrifying just knowing that at any point in time they could show up and take our daughter without being valid and I didn’t find it valid and a lot of people in Indiana and across the world don’t find it valid,” said Lelah Jerger.

In the lawsuit, the Jergers claim Jaelah was ordered to have her blood drawn to make sure Keppra was in her system.

“We’ve shown you the bottle. You know that she’s on the Keppra, I mean we’ve already told you, why is our word not good enough?” Jerger questioned.

They claim the drawing was a violation of the fourth amendment and was a warrantless search and seizure.

“Our end goal is to hope that no other family has to go through this again,” said Jerger.

The family is demanding a jury trial.

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http://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/article199404419.html

SEATTLE

“This bill will help save lives, and give doctors, law enforcement and first responders more tools to fight this crisis,” Inslee said in a statement after approval of House Bill 2489. “It will provide help for people who need treatment, and offer wrap around services like housing and employment supports they need to stay healthy and get back on their feet.”

Requiring drug manufacturers to take back unwanted medication from consumers has already been implemented at the local level in some of the state’s biggest counties, including King and Snohomish, according to a summary of House Bill 1047. Massachusetts, Vermont and California have also adopted similar pharmaceutical product stewardship laws, it said.

Some lawmakers opposed requiring drug companies to fund repossession and disposal on concerns that they would raise prices. Others charged that the measure mandating additional opioid training for doctors is unnecessary, given that they’re already heavily trained and regulated, and because it doesn’t do enough to address heroin addiction.

“We’re fighting the wrong monster here,” said Republican Rep. Dan Griffey. “It’s now heroin. It really is.”

In September Washington state and the city of Seattle joined more than two dozen other government entities across the country suing to hold opioid makers accountable for the addiction crisis.

The governments hope to recoup costs of responding to drug addiction, including money spent on emergencies, criminal justice and social services.

The Washington state lawsuit accused the drug companies of deliberately overstating the effectiveness of their prescription painkillers while misleading patients and doctors about the risks of addiction — in violation of Washington’s consumer protection laws.

Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin and one of the companies named in the legal action, has denied those allegations but said in a statement at the time that it was “deeply troubled” by the addiction crisis and “dedicated to being part of the solution.”

This bill apparently gives Pharmacists the LEGAL RIGHT to change the quantity on a opiate prescription. – a basic function of the practice of medicine.. so is the state of Washington legislature giving pharmacist the legal right to practice medicine without making a change to either the Medicare practice act nor the pharmacy practice act.

Using national averages.. the state of Washington would have about 12,500 deaths from the use/abuse of the two drugs Alcohol & Nicotine… about TEN TIMES what die of opiate overdoses.

Why are we not seeing legislatures being concerned about all these deaths ?

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http://13wham.com/news/local/local-kratom-users-disagree-with-new-fda-warnings

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https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/02/07/584059938/trump-says-he-will-focus-on-opioid-law-enforcement-not-treatment

More than three months after President Trump declared the nation’s opioid crisis a public health emergency, activists and health care providers say they’re still waiting for some other action.

The Trump administration quietly renewed the declaration recently. But it has given no signs it’s developing a comprehensive strategy to address an epidemic that claims more than 115 lives every day. The president now says that to combat opioids, he’s focused on enforcement, not treatment.

Trump spent just over a minute of his 80-minute State of the Union address talking about opioids. In a speech this week in Cincinnati, he had a few more comments. The opioid epidemic, he said, “has never been worse. People form blue ribbon committees. They do everything they can. And frankly, I have a different take on it. My take is you have to get really, really tough, really mean with the drug pushers and the drug dealers.”

The president’s mention of “blue ribbon committees” sounds like a slam on one he convened last year, chaired by former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. The commission issued more than 50 recommendations. The administration has so far followed up on just a few of those recommendations.

Some officials and care providers who work on the frontlines of the opioid crisis, however, are scathing about what they see as a lack of action from the White House. Former Congressman Patrick Kennedy, who served on the White House opioid commission, says he’s “incredulous” that, after declaring a public health emergency in October, the president still hasn’t requested any money from Congress to combat the epidemic.

“I mean this is just a mental health crisis of the first order,” Kennedy says, “and this administration has done nothing.”

Here’s what the administration has done so far:

• President Trump declared a public health emergency in October to deal with the opioid epidemic. The declaration brought no new money to fund the federal response.
• In November, President Trump announced he’s donating his third-quarter salary — about $100,000 — to help the Department of Health and Human Services fight opioids.
• The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced a policy change in November that allows states to apply for waivers allowing them to use Medicaid to pay for residential drug treatment at facilities that have more than 16 beds. Some states are already taking advantage of that policy change.
• President Trump signed the Interdict Act in January giving federal agents additional tools for detecting fentanyl and other synthetic opioids at the border.
• Also this month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced an operation using medical data to crack down on pharmacies and doctors that dispense suspicious amounts of opioids.

Here are things critics point out the administration hasn’t done:

• There is still no head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. In October, Trump’s nominee to the position, Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pa., withdrew his name after reports linked him with a bill that limited the DEA’s ability to investigate abuses by opioid manufacturers and distributors.
• President Trump still hasn’t nominated anyone to head the Drug Enforcement Agency.
• The administration hasn’t asked Congress for any new funding to address the opioid epidemic.

Roughly 64,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2016, and data from the CDC indicates deaths are rising. Kennedy says what’s needed is a coordinated federal response similar to the one in the mid-1990s — when the U.S. spent $24 billion a year to address the HIV/AIDS crisis.

“We’re talking about a major league crisis and they’re taking credit for little things, while the whole country is burning down,” Kennedy says.

Instead of a big boost in funding, the Trump administration is focused, in many cases, on cutting spending.

In the 2018 budget, the president recommended cutting the Office of National Drug Control Policy budget by 95 percent, and may do so again this year.

A law signed by President Barack Obama that designated a billion dollars to help states combat opioids runs out of money this year. Humphreys has seen no sign President Trump intends to ask Congress to renew that funding.

“The 2018 budget had a $400 million cut to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which is the lead agency that funds treatment in the United States,” Humphreys says. “So, the administration’s impulse seems to be not to spend more — in fact to spend less.”

The White House is preparing to act on one of the recommendations of its opioid commission—that it launch a campaign to educate the public, especially young people, on the dangers of opioids. The campaign is being developed not by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, but by a team in the White House led by Kellyanne Conway.

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