In a significant move to curb the rising presence of xylazine in Pennsylvania's street drug supply, state legislators have passed a bill criminalizing its illicit possession. The new legislation, known as House Bill 1661, classifies xylazine as a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act. The Pennsylvania House and Senate overwhelmingly approved the bill,
California's new Campus Opioid Safety Act goes into effect on January 1, 2023. Officials call it a bold measure that will save lives, providing fentanyl and addiction education, information, and Narcan, the FDA-approved opioid overdose reversal drug, on all college campuses in California. What Is the Campus Opioid Safety Act? The Act was recently passed
Many people experiment with new street drugs. In the past several months, however, labs across the country have come across a new threat to the health of people who use drugs. Xylazine, a drug that originally was used to drug large animals like cows, is showing up in the blood of overdose cases. People with
As anyone in the addiction community can tell you, drug overdoses were devastatingly common during the pandemic. Anecdotally, people were relapsing in numbers. Many people in sober housing situations and treatment centers were left on their own in the early days of the pandemic. Sadly, this led to many overdoses and deaths. Now, the numbers
Over the past several years, the media has paid a lot of attention to the opioid epidemic, without noting another silent killer: the over-prescription of benzodiazepines. Benzos prescriptions such as Klonopin, Xanax, and Ativan, used primarily to help with anxiety disorders, have been rising steadily. Research shows they are increasingly prescribed for off-label use, without
An alarming uptick of amphetamine use, such as crystal meth and speed, has quietly taken center stage for some hospitals also struggling with opioids abuse. Between 2008 and 2015, Amphetamine-related hospitalizations jumped by about 245%, according to the American Medical Association’s latest report. The increase is a startling reminder that the addiction epidemic isn’t isolated
In Washington DC, over 250 K-2 overdoses have occurred due to what is being described as a “bad batch” of “synthetic marijuana” in the last ten days. Over one hundred of those overdoses occurred over the weekend last week. The overdoses have occurred in all quadrants of the District, which means that the distribution of
The US Surgeon General, Jerome Adams has announced he thinks it’s important for people who are at-risk of overdose or know somebody who might be, to carry naloxone. On Monday, the Surgeon General met with about a half-dozen residents during a meeting with the Northern Kentucky Health Department in Florence. He told the crowd of
How can a first responder or doctor know if an overdose victim has taken a not-so-common designer drug? Chemists say that a designer drug test would do the trick, and they’re already working on formulating one that is universal enough to be useful in making a diagnosis. Many people buy and use synthetic drugs –
