Maybe we should go back to being a English colony ?

Posted on January 6, 2017 by Pharmaciststeve

UK Reclassifies CBD Oil as Medicine Just as America Puts It in Class With Heroin

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/uk-reclassifies-cbd-oil-medicine-america-puts-class-heroin

After the DEA moved to further constrain Americans’ access to medically miraculous CBD oil by classifying it alongside heroin and cocaine, Britain chose compassion and common sense — and just classified cannabidiol (CBD) as a medicine.

On Monday, Britain’s Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) decided CBD — which can treat illnesses and conditions from severe childhood epilepsy to autism to cancer — warranted the classification as a medicine based on credible evidence of its efficacy.

Thus, unlike in the U.S. — where the substance is now considered devoid of medical benefit by the DEA — CBD meeting quality and regulatory standards may be legally obtained by any British citizens who need it, reports High Times.

“We have come to the opinion that products containing cannabidiol (CBD) used for medical purposes are a medicine,” an MHRA spokesperson said in a statement on the agency’s website.

“Our primary concern is patient safety and we wish to reiterate that individuals using cannabidiol (CBD) products to treat or manage the symptoms of medical conditions should discuss their treatment with their doctor.

“MHRA will now work with individual companies and trade bodies in relation to making sure products containing CBD, used for a medical purpose, which can be classified as medicines, satisfy the legal requirements of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012.”

This rational approach stands in sharp and tragic contrast to draconian drug laws in the U.S., where, as of January 13, CBD oil — which does not contain the psychoactive chemical THC, which gives people a high — and all cannabinoids will be considered dangerous substances.

Healthcare and cannabis rights advocates have excoriated the DEA’s brash and baseless move, noting lives will now be in jeopardy.

“The whole policy around this plant is just so illogical,” Robert J. Capecchi, director of federal policies at the Marijuana Policy Project, told Vice. “Even when you look at the criteria you’re supposed to be looking at under the law, they’re just not following it. It’s just a stupid policy for lack of a better term.”

THC-containing cannabis — also medically beneficial for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, among many other conditions — still remains as a Schedule I substance in the U.S., and is not considered medicine in Britain.

But the latter has taken steps in the right direction with the new classification for CBD — a complete reversal of cease and desist orders sent by MHRA to vendors only months ago, as High Times notes, ordering it to be “removed from sale in the UK.”

“The change really came about with us offering an opinion that CBD is in fact a medicine,” Gerald Heddel, director of inspection and enforcement at the agency, explained to Sky News, “and that opinion was based on the fact that we noted that people were making some quite stark claims about serious diseases that could be treated with CBD.”

Decades of government propaganda about the putative dangers of ‘marijuana’ — amplified exponentially by President Nixon’s administration’s agenda to, in essence, criminalize black people and the anti-war left — still linger in the stigmatization of all the cannabis plant’s myriad derivatives.

Despite the DEA’s war on cannabis and its users, onerous prohibition has been voted out in an increasing number of states — forcing those who need it to uproot their lives and move, in order not to face arrest over their medicine. Medical research into cannabis and cannabinoids continues to evince the miraculous assets the plant offers. In just one example, as High Times explains,

“In early December, researchers from the University of Alabama found that CBD oil reduces both the frequency and severity of seizures in children and adults with with severe, intractable epilepsy. In two-thirds of the 81 participants, the severity was reduced by at least 50 percent.”

In classifying CBD as medicine, MHRA recognizes such benefits — and the improved health of British citizens — eclipse the value in blindly continuing dangerous and inaccurate propaganda.

Sadly, the highly profitable war on drugs and influence of pharmaceutical corporations have the DEA feigning ignorance about cannabis and CBD — at the expense of people’s lives.

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state of WA.. where MJ is LEGAL… DEA spends 760,000 on eradication

Posted on January 6, 2017 by Pharmaciststeve

A federal “cannabis eradication response team” works to clear a marijuana farm on Eastern Washington tribal land in August, 2010. (Drug Enforcement Administration handout)DEA’s marijuana-eradication program still targets Washington, where (some) pot is legal

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/marijuana/deas-marijuana-eradication-program-still-targets-washington/

The Drug Enforcement Administration spends millions of taxpayer dollars each year to eradicate illegal marijuana plants — even in Washington state, where the drug has been legal since 2012.

 
By

Special to The Seattle Times

It’s a scene that continues to unfold in Washington state: A helicopter hovers low over the trees, deep inside a park in the Cascade Mountains; a SWAT team dressed in Kevlar rappels from the chopper to the ground; other officers, federal agents and state environmental officials move toward the site on foot, alert for armed guards, booby traps and razor fencing.

The targets of these taxpayer-funded efforts aren’t terrorism suspects or dangerous fugitives — they are marijuana plants.

 

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has for decades poured millions of dollars into a nationwide marijuana-eradication program, and the effort continues even in Washington, where the drug was legalized for recreational use in 2012. Financial documents obtained from the DEA show that in fiscal year 2016, Washington was the nation’s fourth-largest recipient of eradication funding, at $760,000. According to the most recent data, each plant the state destroys costs taxpayers $26.49, over six times the national average.

 

Washington’s funding has fallen 28 percent over the last three fiscal years, from about $1.1 million. But funds for the DEA’s marijuana-eradication program have seen larger cuts in other states where the drug has been legalized, according to the financial documents. Colorado’s funding dropped to zero over the past two fiscal years. Oregon’s budget has been slashed by 80 percent — from $1 million to $200,000 — during the same time.

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Upon release of the DEA’s financial documents, a bipartisan group of eight members of Congress sent a letter in October to the U.S. Government Accountability Office that called the program’s roughly $18 million annual cost wasteful.

“While the DEA’s Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program has been in effect nationwide for three decades, the recent trend in state laws to legalize and decriminalize the production, distribution or consumption of marijuana calls into question the necessity of such a program,” the letter states.

One of the letter’s signees, U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., proposed legislation last year that would have cut the eradication program’s funding in half. The effort failed.

 

Lieu, in an interview with The Seattle Times before the November election, said that legalization of recreational marijuana in California — the nation’s top cultivator — would force the DEA to reassess the feasibility of trying to suppress the country’s supply. The election saw voters in California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada approve measures to legalize marijuana for recreational use. Voters in Arkansas, Florida, Montana and North Dakota approved the drug for medical use.

Legalization will accelerate discussions of whether the drug’s national prohibition can be maintained, Lieu said.

“I don’t believe the arguments that this program is needed. From a taxpayer’s standpoint, it doesn’t make any sense that Washington state is still spending so much money on marijuana eradication,” Lieu said. “There are so many more worthwhile uses for it.”

Lt. Chris Sweet of the Washington State Patrol has managed the state’s eradication program since 2013, mainly by requesting and administering federal funds. Sweet said that when he attends law-enforcement conferences, he’s frequently asked how he can operate a marijuana-eradication program in a state where the drug is legal.

“I hear it all the time: ‘You guys still have an outdoor-eradication program when you’re a legalized state? How does that make sense?’ ” Sweet said.

Eradication remains a law-enforcement priority because Mexican drug cartels may have moved their marijuana-growing operations north of the border, where the climate produces higher-quality plants, Sweet said. These organizations tend to operate on swaths of public land, often in mountainous regions, where detection of large crops is difficult.

The abundance of good growing terrain along the eastern slopes of the Cascades has led the Sinaloa Cartel of Mexico — considered the world’s most powerful drug-running operation — to operate in that region for some time, according to a recent joint report from the DEA and Department of Justice.

The presence of Mexican drug cartels might explain why Furadan, a pesticide banned in the United States and “only made south of the border,” has been found on Washington’s illicitly grown marijuana crops, Sweet said. California authorities have also cited the pesticide as evidence of Mexican involvement in grow operations there. Starting this year, Sweet said, officers removing illegal marijuana plants must wear protective suits and be accompanied by Department of Ecology agents.

The DEA’s eradication program gained national attention in September after a helicopter, a bevy of police vehicles, state police officials and National Guard troops descended upon the home of an 81-year-old Massachusetts woman to haul off a single marijuana plant growing in her garden.

However, small growing operations are not typically targeted by the program. The average size of a Washington crop bust in 2015 was 609 plants; the average size nationally was 519, according to DEA records.

There have been roughly 57,000 plants eradicated in Washington so far this year, a 63 percent increase over 2015’s total haul. Sweet believes the involvement of Mexican drug cartels helps explain the rise in plant discoveries this year.

“No one had a crystal ball about how legalization would affect our outdoor growing, but with the spike this year, we’ll have to see what the coming years bring,” he said. “Is it a freak thing? It’s too early to tell.”

But the DEA’s records show that the number of plants found in Washington this year is almost identical to the number found two years ago, and down significantly from the 346,484 plants eradicated five years ago. Nationwide, the records show a nearly 70 percent decrease in the number of grow sites eradicated between 2010 and 2014.

Morgan Fox, communications manager of the Marijuana Policy Project, the largest U.S. nonprofit dedicated to marijuana reform, said the best way to limit the impact of drug cartels is to “eliminate the illicit market, and make it not worth it economically. That’s what we see legalization doing.”

“Law-enforcement organizations are loath to give up on funding sources, so there are times there is a concerted effort to tell a dramatic story,” Fox said. “Marijuana eradication is just playing whack-a-mole.”

In justifying the program’s continued existence in Washington, Sweet cited the need to fight Mexican gangs, and to mitigate the environmental damage caused by grow operations. The fact the program has been slashed in Colorado and Oregon is ominous to him, he said.

“We’ve seen the proposals in Congress, and the public perception, and the adage that this is money that can be used for other programs, like education and treatment,” Sweet said. “That’s definitely a big concern.”

For Fox, the fact eight more states legalized pot this November illustrates the program’s increasing irrelevance. After alcohol’s prohibition, he said, a criminal element remained in the industry for a while but diminished as the legal market established itself.

“We don’t see illicit criminal organizations planting secret vineyards on national parks when the market has been made legal for wine,” said Fox. “There’s still some illegal moonshine stills around the country, but it’s not a big issue. This is where we’re headed as a country.”

 

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Has WAGS “Good Faith Policy” finally starting to impact sales ?

Posted on January 6, 2017 by Pharmaciststeve

The exterior of the Walgreens store in Times Square is seen in New York, U.S., July 5, 2016. Picture taken July 5, 2016. REUTERS/Shannon StapletonWalgreens reports surprise drop in quarterly sales

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/01/05/walgreens-reports-surprise-drop-in-quarterly-sales.html

It has been a few years since Walgreens has implemented their “good faith policy” on filling opiates and allows their Pharmacist to “BLACK BALL” a pt from all 8500 stores… and turn down filling any particular prescription if no more than “they don’t feel comfortable”… I know I have seen statements from numerous pts – mostly chronic pain pts – they have refuse to spend money at a Walgreens over their  “good faith policy”…  I know that I stopped over 4 yrs ago..after being denied a C-II Rx filled and we had some $15,000+/yr of Rx filled..  But don’t worry about Walgreens… they are buying/merging with the 4500 Rite Aid Stores… so as soon as that happens they will be able to report increased sales year over year… but if people keep refusing to deal with their “good faith policy”  and it will only take a year until their year to year sales will start falling again…

Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc , the largest U.S. drugstore chain, reported a surprise drop in quarterly sales, hurt by a weak euro and pound and lower reimbursements for generic drugs.

Net income attributable to Walgreens fell to $1.05 billion, or 97 cents per share, in the first quarter ended Nov. 30, from $1.11 billion, or $1.01 per share, a year earlier.

Sales fell to $28.50 billion from $29.03 billion.

Walgreens, which is awaiting regulatory approval for its $9.5 billion takeover of smaller rival Rite Aid Corp , said it expects to close the deal early this year.

 

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The next step in “MAKING SOME NOISE”

Posted on January 6, 2017 by Pharmaciststeve

There has been a small dedicated groups of chronic painers that have finished the list of twitter address for both House/Senate and working on list of TV/news media.

How is the next step in the program is to get those in the chronic pain community to send us links from local news media about how those in the chronic pain community have been harmed by the actions of the DEA,CDC and other entities..

Those incidents where pts commit suicide because their doc was raided and they were tossed to the street and only the local media will cover the story.

The DEA has 26 district offices & HQ that has a well organized press release machine that has a constant stream of press releases to the media and others…

Those in the chronic pain community needs to send those web story links to painedlives@gmail.com… the tweets will be sent out under the @painedlives account… the chronic painer will remain anonymous.

The Twitter account @painedlives can only be tracked back to ME !!!

If you are a chronic painer… can READ… have a computer… can CUT/PASTE a website address and send it to painedlives@gmail.com…  YOU CAN HELP THE PROGRAM.

If this works and we can educated the politicians/bureaucrats and create a discussion then we can expand to state legislators/bureaucrats.

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Another F-ing BUREAUCRAT wanting to practice medicine with only a BA degree and NO MEDICAL BACKGROUND

Posted on January 6, 2017 by Pharmaciststeve

The Associated PressPence’s Indiana successor backs fewer needle exchange limits

http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2017-01-05/pences-indiana-successor-backs-fewer-needle-exchange-limits

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana’s incoming governor pledged Thursday to roll back some restrictions on needle exchanges that his predecessor, Vice President-elect Mike Pence, signed into law as part of the state’s response to its largest HIV epidemic.

Republican Eric Holcomb, who takes office next week, said he believes local officials — not the state — should be able to authorize needle exchanges, a move he characterized as a “prudent step.” Health experts, who criticized Pence’s response to the crisis, say exchanges can dramatically curtail deadly outbreaks by allowing intravenous drug users to swap dirty needles for clean ones.

“When we open the newspaper and you see the obituaries it’s heartbreaking and we know that this is just the tip of the iceberg,” Holcomb said during a news conference outlining an agenda for his first year in office. “We know it goes much, much deeper below the surface affecting our families.”

A spokesman for Pence, who backed Holcomb to succeed him as governor after Donald Trump tapped him for the Republican ticket, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

In 2015, Scott County, in southern Indiana, saw the number of people infected with the HIV skyrocket, with nearly 200 people testing positive for the virus in a span of months. Indiana law at the time prohibited needle exchanges, exacerbating the outbreak, which primarily infected intravenous users of the painkiller Opana.

Pence had long opposed needle exchanges but was persuaded to issue an executive order allowing one in Scott County, which lies about 30 miles north of Louisville, Kentucky. And despite his own misgivings — Pence said he didn’t support the exchanges as an “anti-drug policy” — he signed a law allowing the state government to approve them on a case-by-case basis.

 

At the time, Pence said he was acting to halt the spread of the virus “despite my reservations” about providing clean needles to addicts.

But the process has been fraught with bureaucracy and often put road blocks up in impoverished areas where multiple counties sought to pool resources, said Beth Meyerson, co-director of the Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention at Indiana University.

About 25 counties have taken steps to adopt needle exchanges, but currently only three counties, including Scott County, have active programs, according to state data and Meyerson

“This is terrific news,” said Meyerson. “Now it’s a different day and a different administration.”

Meyerson urged Holcomb and lawmakers to also make more money available for the areas that are hardest hit, which are often poor. A 2015 report by the Trust for America’s Health ranked Indiana 43rd in public health spending, with $13.08 spent per capita. She also encouraged Holcomb to seek federal funding for needles exchanges — something Pence didn’t do.

“The prior governor (Pence) did not want federal funding drawn down for anything, let alone public health,” she said.

Holcomb’s proposal is part of a package of initiatives he is launching to combat drug abuse. He also wants to stiffen punishment for pharmacy robberies and limit the number of narcotics that can be prescribed, or picked up from a pharmacy, at one time. Holcomb has also created a position in his administration that will serve as the state’s drug czar and look for ways to increase funding for efforts like needle exchanges.

One factor that made Indiana’s 2015 outbreak so severe is that the virus spread quickly while lawmakers and Pence contemplated what action to take.

 

Holcomb said these are matters that local officials can best address because they “have the ability to get out of the gate fast.”

 

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Imagine this: Psychiatric, behavioral conditions linked to future long-term opioid use

Posted on January 5, 2017 by Pharmaciststeve

Psychiatric, behavioral conditions linked to future long-term opioid use

http://www.clinicaladvisor.com/pain-information-center/psychiatric-and-behavioral-conditions-with-opioid-use/article/629637/?

Preexisting psychiatric and behavioral conditions and psychoactive medication use are associated with subsequent claims of prescription opioids, according to a study published in Pain.

The preexisting psychiatric and behavioral conditions include substance use disorders (SUDs), opioid use disorders (OUDs), suicide attempts and other self-injury, depression, and motor vehicle crashes.

Patrick D. Quinn, PhD, from the Department of Psychological and Brain services at Indiana University, and colleagues examined health insurance claims among 10,311,961 opioid recipients, ages 14 years and older (18 and older for motor vehicle crashes) who had at least 12 calendar months of continuous enrollment of a filled opioid prescription.

The researchers evaluated how opioid receipt differed among patients with and without a wide range of preexisting psychiatric and behavioral conditions. These include OUD, nonopioid SUD, depressive disorder, uncertain or definite suicide attempt or self-injury (combined), anxiety disorder, sleep disorder, and motor-vehicle crashes. Also included were psychoactive medications such as antidepressants and mood stabilizers.

The first objective was to estimate the extent to which prior psychiatric conditions, motor vehicle crashes, and psychoactive medications would predict claims for prescription opioids. The most common condition was depression, diagnosed in 8.5% of cases, while suicide-attempts and self injury were the least common conditions (0.1%). Patients with prior OUD or nonopioid SUD diagnosis had 16% or 11% greater odds, respectively, of receiving opioids than did patients without these conditions.

The second objective was to estimate the extent to which prior psychiatric conditions, motor vehicle crashes, and psychoactive medications would predict receipt of long-term opioids among opioid recipients. Increases in risk for long-term opioid receipt in adjusted Cox regressions ranged from approximately 1.5-fold for prior ADHD medication prescriptions (hazard ratio [HR], 1.53) to approximately 3-fold for prior nonopioid SUD diagnoses (HR, 3.15) and nearly 9-fold for prior OUD diagnoses (HR, 8.70). The probability of transitioning from first fill to long-term opioids was 1.3% by 1.5 years after the first prescription fill, 2.1% by 3 years, 3.7% by 6 years, and 5.3% by 9 years.

“Patients with prior psychiatric diagnoses, suicide attempts or other self-injury, and motor vehicle crashes were at greater risk of transitioning from an incident opioid prescription fill to receipt of long-term opioids than were patients without prior psychiatric conditions,” said the authors. “Future studies assessing behavioral outcomes associated with opioid prescribing should consider preexisting psychiatric conditions.”

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Hate crime charges filed in Chicago beating streamed on Facebook Live

Posted on January 5, 2017 by Pharmaciststeve

Hate crime charges filed in Chicago beating streamed on Facebook Live

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/01/05/hate-crime-charges-filed-in-chicago-beating-shown-on-facebook-live.html

Where is all the anti-racial critics ?  Where is the outrage of this happening to a mentally challenged/handicap/disabled person ?  It reportedly took FACE BOOK…  TWENTY FOUR HOURS to take this down.  No wonder that Obama is not moving back to his home town of CHICAGO when he leaves the White House in a couple of weeks.  Where in 2016, there was more MURDERS (762)  than New York City and Los Angeles TOGETHER and Illinois has some of the TOUGHEST GUN LAWS in the country.

Hate crime and aggravated battery charges were filed against four African American suspects who police say bound, gagged and tortured a mentally challenged white male while shouting racial and anti-Donald Trump slurs, Fox News confirmed.

The two male and two female suspects — Jordan Hill, 18, Tesfaye Cooper, 18, Brittany Covington, 18, and Tanishia Covington, 24 — were set to appear in Central Bond Court on Friday afternoon.

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Tesfaye Cooper, left, Jordan Hill, Tanishia Covington and Brittany Covington were each charged with a hate crime. (CPD)

Police became aware on Tuesday of the heinous video footage, FOX32 reported. In the clip, which allegedly was posted to one of the suspect’s Facebook feeds, an 18-year-old mentally disabled man was restrained and beaten. Later that day, authorities encountered the disoriented victim walking down a street wearing only shorts despite the cold weather.

“It makes you wonder what would make individuals treat somebody like that,” Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said during a Wednesday news conference. “I’ve been a cop for 28 years and I’ve seen things that you shouldn’t see. It still amazes me how you still see things that you just shouldn’t.”

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“I’m not going to say it shocked me, but it was sickening.”

Police believe the incident began when the victim, who lives in Crystal Lake, met the group in Streamwood, a neighboring suburb. They then drove to Chicago in a stolen vehicle, FOX32 reported.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest wouldn’t say if he thought the incident was a hate crime, but did discuss the callous nature of the crime.

“They do demonstrate a level of depravity that is an outrage to a lot of Americans,” Earnest said. “I have not spoken to the president but I’m confident he would be angered by the images depicted.”

The victim was kept tied up with his mouth taped shut in an apartment on the city’s west side. The video showed him cowering in a corner while someone yelled “F— white people!” and “F— Donald Trump!” At one point in the video, the victim was held at knifepoint and told to curse the president-elect.

The victim was a classmate of one of the suspects,, investigators said, adding that he was held in the apartment for at least 24 hours, possibly as long as 48 hours.

The video showed the man being kicked and hit repeatedly, while his scalp was cut. The group apparently forced him to drink water from a toilet.

The suspects could be heard saying they wanted the video to go viral.

They now face a bevy of charges.

Hill was charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, robbery, residential burglary; Cooper was charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and residential burglary; Brittany Covington was charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and residential burglary; Tanishia Covington was charged with aggravated kidnapping, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

Hill is from Carpentersville and the others are Chicago residents.

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Independent Pharmacies Tout Enhanced Services

Posted on January 5, 2017 by Pharmaciststeve

Independent Pharmacies Tout Enhanced Services

http://drugtopics.modernmedicine.com/drug-topics/news/independent-pharmacies-tout-enhanced-services?

Independent community pharmacies have a new tool to help them promote the enhanced services that they provide their patients.

Irvine, California-based PrescribedWellness has expanded its software services offering to include promoting enhanced services via cloud-based data mining software.

“Community pharmacy lacked a centralized voice. We are creating a national voice for community pharmacy,” said PrescribedWellness CEO Al Babbington.

Here’s how it works

Patients or payers can log on to PrescribeWellness.com, www.prescribewellness.com  then input a zip code and a map of community pharmacies in the area is displayed. They can enter the type of service they want (for example: smoking cessation or diabetes counseling) and a list of community pharmacies that provide the desired service is displayed.

PrescribeWellness has partnered with wholesale giants AmerisourceBergen and McKesson. They are also collaborating closely with NCPA as the official technology for their Simplify My Meds medication synchronization program.

“We are providing pharmacies with the tools and support to become high performers in Star Ratings and key performance measurements as well as to expand the population health and chronic care services they offer. This helps position our pharmacies for participation in NCPA-supported programs such as Community Pharmacies Enhanced Services Networks, added Babbington.

Joe Moose, PharmD, owner of Moose Pharmacy in North Carolina said that pharmacists have done a good job of telling each other how great they are at helping patients and reducing medical costs. “But we haven’t done a very good job telling people outside of pharmacy.”

Moose said that PrescribeWellness gives independent community pharmacies the opportunity to let the world know that they can affect health care.

“It lets patients and payers know that they can reach out to a higher quality pharmacy that’s performing enhanced services – and that you get a different outcome than you would from a pharmacy that’s not providing these enhanced services.”

Prescribe Wellness also provides pharmacists with data on where they might need to improve to provide the best outcome for the patient. For example: how to keep better track of patient adherence or helping to coordinate immunizations.

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state has about 7,000 inmates with hepatitis C, and treating them… would cost $600 million

Posted on January 5, 2017 by Pharmaciststeve

PMUMIA07Z-AFederal judge orders state to provide Mumia Abu-Jamal with hepatitis C treatment

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20170104_Federal_judge_orders_state_to_provide_Mumia_Abu-Jamal_with_hepatitis_C_treatment.html

Pennsylvania has abt 13 million population or abt 4% of the USA population…  so the 600 million to treat these inmates in PA could represent a 15 BILLION liability if you expand that to all the prison population in the USA. Any of these prisoners that also have HIV +and HEP B… the cost of treatment could be upwards of $750,000 PER PERSON.  Is this  a “taxpayer liability” because of the USA’s policy of treating the “brain disease” of addiction as a CRIME… which forces addicts to share needles and thus share whatever diseases any of the previous users of the needle had ? So much for our healthcare system’s goal of DISEASE PREVENTION

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that Mumia Abu-Jamal should be provided new medications by the state to treat his hepatitis C infection.

 U.S. District Judge Robert D. Mariani ordered that Abu-Jamal, who is serving life in prison for the 1981 killing of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, must be seen by a doctor within 14 days to determine if there is a medical reason he should not get the expensive drugs.

If Abu-Jamal is medically cleared, the state must provide him with recently developed direct-acting antiviral medication, also known as DDA.

 

Susan McNaughton, a Department of Corrections spokeswoman, said, “We are reviewing the decision and cannot comment further at this time.” She did not elaborate.

 

The DOC has argued in court filings that Abu-Jamal has not met the criteria for treatment.

The state has about 7,000 inmates with hepatitis C, and treating them – at a cost of $84,000 to $90,000 per person – would cost $600 million.

Robert J. Boyle, a New York lawyer representing Abu-Jamal, said in a statement that he expected the state to appeal the ruling.

“The struggle is far from over: the DOC will no doubt appeal this ruling. But a victory!” Boyle said.

Bret Grote of the Abolitionist Law Center for drunk driving attorneys in Pittsburgh said the ruling was the first time “a federal court has ordered prison officials to provide an incarcerated patient with the new [hepatitis C] medications that came on the market in 2013.”

In 2015, Abu-Jamal, who spent 29 years on death row, was hospitalized after he fell into diabetic shock and was found to have hepatitis C. Lawyers filed suit that year to improve his medical treatment.

Mariani, a Scranton judge who sits in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, previously stated that the Department of Corrections’ interim protocol for treating hepatitis C “presents deliberate indifference to the known risks which follow from untreated chronic hepatitis C.”

But he ruled against Abu-Jamal because members of the department’s Hepatitis C Treatment Committee, which makes treatment decisions, had not been named as defendants. An amended complaint was filed in September.

Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther and sometime radio reporter, was found guilty of the Dec. 9, 1981, slaying of Faulkner, 25.

He was sentenced to death in 1982, but that sentence was overturned by a federal appeals court and reduced to life without parole.

 

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Fentanyl Deaths Have Spiked Across the US, With No Sign of Slowing Down

Posted on January 4, 2017 by Pharmaciststeve

PHOTO: Drugs seized during a joint DEA raid in Manchester, New Hampshire. Sept. 13, 2016.Fentanyl Deaths Have Spiked Across the US, With No Sign of Slowing Down

http://abcnews.go.com/US/fentanyl-deaths-spiked-us-sign-slowing/story?

Morgan Gilman, 21, of Manchester, New Hampshire got in her car and drove three hours to buy a supply of fentanyl.

When she arrived, she took the “normal amount” and got back in her car to drive home, but not before an ominous warning from the seller: “Be careful, it’s stronger this time.”

The next thing she remembers is waking up in the hospital, handcuffed to the bed with the worst headache of her life.

“I was doing about 80 on the highway when I o.d.’ed behind the wheel,” Gilman said.

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The car rolled four times, she was told. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt, but somehow managed to stay inside the vehicle.

She was in a coma, but awoke a few hours later with a broken back.

“My dad was crying. I had no idea why I was there,” Gilman said. “My first thought was like ‘What is going on?'” she said.

After the harrowing experience, she said she decided to end her drug use.

“I was tired of living in my car, I was tired of needing it, I was tired that the first thing I thought about when I woke up was how to find drugs,” she told ABC News.

Gilman’s car accident was this past spring and she said she’s now been clean for seven months.

But many people don’t survive. Gilman said her best friend died of a drug overdose. And fentanyl — the deadly synthetic opioid that is quickly catching up to heroin as one of the most abused drugs — has been killing people at extraordinary rates.

PHOTO: Morgan Gilman, 21, overdosed on fentanyl and got in a car accident last spring. She has been clean for 7 months.Jack Date/ABC News
Morgan Gilman, 21, overdosed on fentanyl and got in a car accident last spring. She has been clean for 7 months.

Morgan lives at ground zero for the fentanyl epidemic. In the small state of New Hampshire, where there are typically less than 20 homicides a year, more than 400 people died from drug overdoses in 2015, according to FBI crime data and New Hampshire officials. Around 70 percent of those were linked to Fentanyl, according to the New Hampshire State Police Forensic Laboratory.

The 2016 overdose deaths are expected to approach 500, according to New Hampshire’s lab. Final 2016 numbers aren’t yet available, as officials work through the backlog in drug processing.

Beginning in 2014, the state saw a huge spike in overdoses resulting in death, according to Timothy Pifer, Director of the New Hampshire State Police Forensic Laboratory.

“I’ve been involved in the forensic field here in New Hampshire for 27 years,” Pifer said, “and I lived through the crack epidemics and the methamphetamine, but we’ve never had deaths associated with it like we do now.”

He said he doesn’t believe it’s peaked yet.

The state lab receives about 750 new drug submissions every month, but can only process about 550, according to Pifer.

“Some days it feels like we’re shoveling sand against the tide in terms of getting the cases out,” he said.

While the Northeast has been hit hard, fentanyl is rapidly spreading across the United States.

Blender used to mix clandestine fentanyl. DEA
Blender used to mix clandestine fentanyl.

The death rate from synthetic opioids, which include fentanyl, increased by about 72 percent between 2014 and 2015, according to a new CDC study. Law enforcement sources believe fentanyl is largely to blame.

For example, in Pennsylvania, there were 349 fentanyl-involved deaths in 2014, and 913 deaths in 2015, according to the DEA. In North Carolina, fentanyl-related deaths, went from 165 in 2014 to 226 last year. And that jumped to 321, according to the preliminary data for 2016 in the state.

In Florida, these deaths were up nearly 70 percent from 2014 to 2015. In Massachusetts they were up 20 percent during the same time period.

On New Year’s Eve, police in Methuen, Massachusetts were dispatched to a residence for a report of a baby in distress.

The ten-month-old child was transported to the hospital where she stopped breathing twice and had to be revived by staff, according to the Methuen Police Department.

Hospital tests indicate that the baby had fentanyl in her system, according to police.

“It’s heartbreaking to say the least. I mean it’s a 10-month-old baby,” said Lt. Michael Pappalaro.

The baby has since been released into the custody of a family member at a different residence and the incident is still under police investigation.

In an unrelated event two days later, Methuen police arrested a man who was allegedly in possession of $1.2 million dollars worth of fentanyl.

Police chief Joseph Solomon told ABC News that the fentanyl situation in his city is “horrible.”

The drug has become a major threat for law enforcement as well.

Fentanyl, which is used legally by medical professionals as a painkiller, is approximately 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine, and 25 to 40 times more potent than heroin, according to the DEA. Contact with just a few grains of the drug can kill.

The Drug Enforcement Administration recently sent a video warning, featuring two investigators from Atlantic County, NJ that accidentally ingested the drug after a seizure, to police around the country warning of its dangers.

“I felt like my body was shutting down,” one of the officers said in the video.

DEA agents are forced to wear cumbersome protective suits with oxygen tanks to make arrests and raid buildings.

The suits are so difficult to maneuver in that agents can only wear them for up to 15 minutes at a time, before they need a break.

Protective suits used to shield DEA agents from exposure to fentanyl during drug busts. DEA
Protective suits used to shield DEA agents from exposure to fentanyl during drug busts.

“If anything can be likened to a weapon of mass destruction in what it does to a community, it’s fentanyl,” said DEA Deputy Administrator Jack Riley.

Fentanyl is a Schedule II synthetic opioid that is approximately 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine, and 25 to 40 times more potent than heroin.”

Contact with just a few grains of the drug can kill.

The Drug Enforcement Administration recently sent a video warning, featuring two investigators from Atlantic County, N.J., that accidentally inhaled the drug after a seizure, to police around the country warning of its dangers.

“I felt like my body was shutting down,” one of the officers said in the video.

DEA agents are forced to wear cumbersome protective suits with oxygen tanks to make arrests and raid buildings.

The suits are so difficult to maneuver in that agents can only wear them for up to 15 minutes at a time, before they need a break.

“If anything can be likened to a weapon of mass destruction in what it does to a community, it’s fentanyl,” said former DEA Deputy Administrator Jack Riley.

Fentanyl is being produced secretly in Mexico and is also being imported directly from China, according to the DEA.

“People on the west coast in Silicon Valley working on the new iPhone, I think the Sinaloa cartel is working on the next product they’re going to market to the addiction base in the United States. That is just how sophisticated they are,” he said.

Cartels are marketing it to dealers, who are pushing it on populations with opioid addiction, resulting in death.

“That’s how hell-bent they are, on making a buck. And I got to tell you, across the country, they don’t care who dies,” he said.

The drug is cheaper and easier to make then heroin, which requires a growing season.

Some people seek out fentanyl, while others don’t realize what they are selling, buying and using.

Natasha Symonds, 26, overdosed just six days before she spoke with ABC News — it was her third overdose.

Symonds used heroin for years, but had never heard of fentanyl until the first time she wound up in the hospital.

“It ended up in what I was doing and I didn’t even know,” she said about the fentanyl.

But that wasn’t the end. She moved out of her house, disconnected from her family and continued to use.

Like Morgan, she also overdosed while driving. The person she was driving with got her help.

“I woke up this time in a different city that I’ve never really been in,” she said.

She was told that despite the dose of Narcan — a drug used to revive opioid overdose victims — she almost didn’t wake up again.

After that she sought help.

“You don’t know what’s in your stuff every time you do it. And you think you know. But one day you’re going to pick it up and you’re going to do it and you’re not going to wake back up again,” she said.

She says she’s been clean for 90 days.

 

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