Tag: prescription drug abuse
-
Legislature likely to tweak, clarify and limit last year’s ‘pill mill bill’
State lawmakers could narrow the focus of last year’s “pill mill bill” during the legislative session that begins tomorrow, to concentrate on adults with long-term prescriptions for frequently abused painkillers,...
-
Painkiller epidemic was driven in part by drug makers’ financial relationships with researchers who discounted the risks
For almost a decade, medical officials and experts claimed OxyContin rarely posed problems of addiction for patients. The drug’s label, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration, said addiction...
-
Generic OxyContin and Opana, headed for market soon, could make fight against pain-pill abuse tougher, McConnell says
With generic versions of the two most commonly-abused painkillers, Opana and OxyContin, coming on the market next year, police, hospitals and health clinics in Kentucky have voiced concern that “these...
-
Deaths from drug overdoses in Kentucky hit new high in 2010; more than half involved prescription drugs
Deaths from drug overdoses in Kentucky jumped to a new high in 2010, and “rose a staggering 296 percent from 2000 to 2010,” Bill Estep of the Lexington Herald-Leader reports. “A...
-
Managed-care doctor creates process to steer pregnant Medicaid recipients who are using dangerous drugs into treatment
When Dr. Jeremy Corbett of Lexington found that “nearly one in five pregnant women enrolled in the Medicaid managed-care program where he works were using narcotics or other harmful drugs,” he...
-
Oregon may show the way for Kentucky in drug treatment
In facing up to its need for more drug-treatment facilities, Kentucky could learn some lessons from Oregon, Courier-Journal reporter Laura Ungar writes in the third and last part of her...
-
In starting its sixth package in series on prescription drug abuse, The Courier-Journal shows treatment programs fall short of need
Brittany Crouch suffers through withdrawal in Frenchburgbefore leaving for treatment in Lexington, as daughterKaylee Adams, 3, cries. (C-J photo by Alton Strupp) “In a state plagued by one of the...
-
Kentucky’s pill-mill problem and law to fight it get national airing, with issues of patient privacy versus public health debated
Kentucky’s “pill problem” went more public Thursday when David Hopkins, head of the state’s prescription drug monitoring program, told the National Conference of State Legislatures the true extent of our prescription...
-
Cheaper heroin showing up in Eastern Kentucky as crackdown on pain pills makes that trade less attractive
About 60 grams of heroin, worth about$8,000. (AP photo) It was only few months ago that Northern Kentucky law enforcement officers and substance abuse clinics began expressing grave concern that...
-
Kentucky is No. 1 state in overuse of antibiotics, a problem that poses wide dangers to the drugs’ effectiveness
In 2010 the average number of dispensed outpatient antibiotic prescriptions was 801 per 1,000 Americans. In Kentucky it was1,197. The darker the state, the higher the rate. (CDC map) Americans, especially Kentuckians, are...