Jeff Hunt is the vice president of public policy at Colorado Christian University.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., has introduced the Marijuana Justice Act in an effort to legalize marijuana across the nation. This is the furthest-reaching legalization effort to date and marks another sad moment in our nation’s embrace of a drug that will have generational consequences.
Our country is facing a drug epidemic. Legalizing recreational marijuana will do nothing that Booker expects. We heard many of these same promises in 2012 when Colorado legalized recreational marijuana.
A lot more research should be done to figure out why Americans have such a propensity to abuse drugs. In most countries, people have access to prescription drugs without needing a prescription. I was recently in Mexico and you can walk into any drug store and buy oxy and Percocet easily. Yet, Mexico is not facing an epidemic like we are. The problem here is and always has been a demand problem, not a supply problem. Why is that? Is life so terrible here that we need to numb ourselves? Or have we been coddled to the point of ignoring the notion of personal responsibilit?. How many bulimics are there in the third world?
It is getting all this new attention because it is hitting the suburbs, and more accurately, white people. Now it’s something we as a society must deal with.
I’m sorry, but it is not a disease. I cannot catch it from someone I shake hands with or even have sex with. While little Johnny or Susie might be at risk, I believe it’s little Johnny or Susie, or their families, who have to deal with it. Why should I? Is lousy financial management also a disease? Is getting pregnant at 14 a disease? Please, enough of this it-takes-a-village crap.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sorry. There are a thousand problems and diseases to be dealt with in this world.
Junkies – irrespective of how they are related to someone – are NOT what the government should be wasting resources on.
The quickest way to reduce the number of junkies is to stop bailing them out and pulling them back from the dead. The message will get through quickly.
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Addiction is a PERSONAL brain disease by which the addict feeds themselves with the substance that releases all the good neurotransmitters. The body then craves more substance to release more neurotransmitters and the cycle continues. The only way you can blame SOCIETY is that we, as a whole, have been too soft and non-judgemental – AKA enablers for the addicts. Before we pass any more legislation giving all drugs the get-out-of-jail-free card, we should ask if flooding the market with a means of escape and/or stupification by substance is the best course of action in the REAL world.
You clearly do not understand that addiction is a disease. And it’s a disease that knows no boundaries – rich, poor, men, women, veterans, businessmen/women, young people, seniors. Addiction is a societal problem not a personal problem and if you consider providing help for them too much trouble then you are part of the problem. You should read about how Portugal dealt with their problems and the results.
15. Bergen County : Bergen had a rate of 470 MME per person in 2015, an 18 percent drop from 2010. This put it in the second-lowest quartile of counties in the United States.
Updated July 07, 2017
Posted July 07, 2017
By Erin Petenko
After years of increasing opioid use, the nation is experiencing a downturn in doctors handing out prescriptions for the class of drugs.
Prescriptions remained high in certain areas of New Jersey, however, according to a Centers for Disease Control report released this week.
On a national level, fewer patients received opioids in 2015 than in 2010, and the strength of the average opioid prescription also went down. However, doctors gave out longer prescriptions in 2015 compared to 2010, and the average strength of a prescription was still dangerously high, according to CDC Acting Director Dr. Anne Schuchat.
“The bottom line is, with opioid prescriptions, we are still seeing too many prescriptions given out for too long,” she said.
Enough opioids were prescribed in 2015 to medicate every American around the clock for three weeks, she said.
New Jersey recently passed legislation mandating a five-day initial prescription limit on opioids in an attempt to combat abuse.
These are the counties with the highest amount of opioids prescribed, given in “morphine milligram equivalents,” or MME, which measures the total dosage of opioids while correcting for differing strengths among different drugs.
By Jason Rhode | July 6, 2017 | 10:55am
Chip Somodevilla
Cory Booker, the Senator from New Jersey of the Closed Beaches, has decided to stop taking money from Big Pharma. For the time being.
Big Pharma loves Booker. Booker loves Big Pharma. But for now, their romance must be the love that dare not speak its name. Booker wants to be President. He needs to base to support him. Hence the freeze-out.
To heal his career wound, Booker needs a medicine more expensive than the ones he helps Big Pharma with. This would be delicious irony, except this sort of thing keeps happening to a certain set of progressive politicians: they are boosted as the last best hope of Earth, before being found out as centrist sellouts. If Booker’s disgrace is poetic justice, then it is poetry which rhymes—no matter how these plastic reformers start, their ends are the same. We need a term to describe the interval of time between initiation as a progressive politician and discovery that the politician is not so progressive.
The opioid epidemic has gotten so bad in New Jersey that librarians are now being instructed to watch out for users overdosing inside a library bathrooms or behind rows of books.
“Our public libraries are obviously the most open building in a community, and we have had situations where librarians have had to call paramedics, for example, when someone has had an overdose,” said Pat Tumulty, the executive director of the New Jersey Library Association.
But there’s an upside to drug users finding safe spaces in libraries. People may come into a library seeking information about addiction, treatment and overdoses and “we’re very aware and very cognizant of making sure that we have the resources available.”
To deal with the opioid issue, Tumulty said, the association is teaming up with mental health experts.
Updated on June 29, 2017 at 5:49 PMPosted on June 29, 2017 at 7:00 AM
BY STEPHEN STIRLING AND ERIN PETENKO
NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
The most powerful opioid ever mass-marketed was designed to ease cancer patients into death.
It’s ideal for that: the drug is fast acting, powerful enough to tame pain that other opioids can’t and comes in a variety of easy delivery methods — from patches to lollipops.
But a dose the size of a grain of sand can kill you.
Meet fentanyl. It’s heroin on steroids. It’s killing people in droves. And, in New Jersey, you can get it after having your tonsils removed.
In fact, doctors who treat children’s colds and adult’s sore knees are prescribing it with alarming frequency, far more than oncologists easing end-of-life cancer pain.
The surge is stoked by companies that shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to doctors, wining and dining them in hopes of convincing them that their particular brand of fentanyl is the solution to all their patients’ pain problems.
Ridgewood NJ, With festival season on the come up it’s increasingly important you remember to stay safe. Especially in New Jersey and elsewhere on the East Coast, as police have now issued health warnings for a new kind of “IKEA” ecstasy tablet.
The pill is a yellow and blue brick-shaped tablet, similar to the IKEA logo, and has already landed users in the hospital thanks to its “stronger than expected” nature. New Jersey police are urging users to stay away from these pills “in the interest of their health.” As always, if you’ve taken one and/or planning to make sure you’re taking the utmost care in precaution when doing so.
More Americans died of drug overdoses last year alone than in the entire Vietnam war, according to Vox and the New York Times. More than ever died of guns or car crashes in a single year, even at the peak of those epidemics.
That’s according to a chilling Times investigation based on preliminary data collected from 2016. Overdose deaths rose 19 percent over the 52,404 recorded in 2015, to somewhere between 59,000 to 65,000.
The final numbers aren’t out yet, since drug deaths take a long time to certify. You see why timely data is crucial. So far, all evidence points to 2017 being even worse, but by the time the boxes are checked and the final reports are filed, thousands more will be dead.
Ridgewood NJ, The Board of Education and Superintendent Dr. Daniel Fishbein will host residents for coffee and casual conversation on Wednesday, May 17. The casual meeting will take place from 7-8:30 p.m. at the Education Center, 49 Cottage Place, Ridgewood. All residents are invited to drop in to share their thoughts, questions, suggestions and concerns.
(CNN)Experts say the United States is in the throes of an opioid abuse epidemic, causing 91 overdose deaths each day. Yet the total number of opioid-related deaths may still be underestimated, suggests new research from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“In early spring, the Minnesota Department of Health was notified of an unexplained death: a middle-aged man who died suddenly at home,” said Dr. Victoria Hall, a CDC field officer based in Minnesota. He’d been on long-term opioid therapy for back pain, and his family had worried he might be abusing his medication. The medical examiner assigned to the autopsy tested for and diagnosed both pneumonia and a toxic level of opioids.
A New Jersey judge has overturned an order preventing a newspaper from reporting on a child services complaint involving a kindergartener who brought drugs to school twice.
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — A judge has overturned an order preventing a newspaper from reporting on a child services complaint involving a kindergarten student who brought drugs to school twice.
Judge Lawrence De Bello ruled Monday that he found no evidence to support the state’s argument that a reporter for the Trentonian newspaper illegally obtained the complaint from the boy’s mother.
Government lawyers sought the injunction against the newspaper, saying child welfare complaints must be kept confidential under state law. The state had alleged that Trentonian reporter Isaac Avilucea stole the complaint from the mother, but he said she knew he was reporting on the story and gave it to him. She had met with him at his office earlier in the day.
The newspaper and open-government advocates argued that the previous order was a clear violation of the First Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the government cannot prevent the press from publishing information except in extreme circumstances involving a clear and present danger.
State Police and U.S. Homeland Security Investigations Seize 14 Kilos of Fetanyl
March 20,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Camden City NJ, A cooperative investigation by the New Jersey State Police Trafficking South Unit and U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Cherry Hill Office resulted in the arrest of Yahmire Boardley, 22, of Camden, N.J. and the seizure of 14 kilograms of fentanyl.
On Thursday, March 16, State Police detectives from Trafficking South, Hazmat, K-9, Crime Suppression South, and T.E.A.M.S Units along with agents from HSI, U.S. DEA Camden HIDTA, U.S. DEA Camden Resident Office, and officers from the Camden County Police Department executed several search warrants throughout the city as the result of a month-long investigation. Investigators seized a total of 14 kilograms of fentanyl from multiple locations and arrested Boardley at his city residence.
Yahmire Boardley was charged with possession of a controlled dangerous substance and possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute. He was processed at the New Jersey State Police Bellmawr Station and lodged at the Camden County Jail pending a bail hearing.
Fentanyl is one of the deadliest opioids. While it has been spotlighted for killing celebrities including Prince, it also has been responsible for a growing death toll in New Jersey, where 417 deaths were attributed to fentanyl in 2015. Used to treat acute pain, fentanyl is up to 50 times more powerful than heroin. In addition, seven fentanyl knock-offs have been sold on the street in New Jersey, usually disguised as less-powerful drugs like heroin or oxycodone, triggering overdose deaths. The Attorney General’s Office issued an emergency order last year adding those fentanyl knockoffs to the list of drugs subject to the strictest level of state control.
“This is a huge bust. By arresting this alleged drug dealer and seizing 14 kilograms of fentanyl, which is 50 times more powerful than heroin, the State Police and HSI stopped many thousands of doses of this lethal opiate from reaching the street,” said Attorney General Christopher S. Porrino. “Our ongoing interdiction of major drug traffickers is just one aspect of our multi-faceted efforts to fight the tragic epidemic of opiate addiction, but it is an important one that, in this case, undoubtedly saved many lives. Another area of focus for our office includes a new strike team that has criminally charged six doctors with indiscriminately prescribing pain pills for profit.”
“This massive seizure of fentanyl, which is a highly addictive and lethal opioid, almost certainly saved lives,” said Colonel Rick Fuentes, Superintendent of the New Jersey State Police. “This cooperative effort between the New Jersey State Police, HSI, and our other law enforcement partners demonstrates our resolve to aggressively target anyone peddling this poison in our communities.”
“Through multi-agency operations such as this one, we’re working to stop the flow of opiates into our communities and save lives,” said Director Elie Honig of the Division of Criminal Justice. “I commend our partners in the State Police and Homeland Security Investigations for their work on this outstanding investigation.”
This case is being prosecuted by the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice.
Charges are mere accusations the suspect is considered innocent until proven guilty.
Ridgewood NJ, Bergen County Prosecutor Gurbir S. Grewal today released a report entitled “Report on the Heroin and Opioid Epidemic in Bergen County.” The report is a year-end report that highlights the effect that the heroin and opioid crisis had on Bergen County in 2016. A copy of the report can be downloaded at https://www.bcpo.net/images/pdf/2016-Report-on-Heroin-Epidemic.pdf .
As detailed in the report, there was an increase in 2016 in total reported overdoses in Bergen County, with 308 overdoses. This represents a 6.9% increase from 2015, during which there were 288 total reported overdoses. As in 2015, however, the majority of the overdoses in 2016 were heroin and opioid related. Despite the increase in total overdoses, however, the number of overdose fatalities remained the same in 2016 with 87 overdose deaths. The fact that overdose deaths remained constant is due in large part to the tireless efforts of County law enforcement officers, who deployed Narcan, the overdose reversal drug, on 207 occasions in 2016, resulting in 180 saved lives. This represents a 10.7% increase in Narcan deployments from 2015.
As it did in 2016, the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office (“BCPO”) is sharing current County overdose and Narcan Save data, as well as mapping the epidemic in the County, using social media. The public is encouraged to follow the BCPO’s efforts on Twitter (@BCPONJ) or on Facebook (fb.com/bcponj). The BCPO is also asking the public to share their own experiences and suggestions concerning this issue by using the hashtag #StopTheODs
“The goal of this report, like our social media campaign, #StopTheODs, is to destigmatize the heroin and opioid epidemic by showing that it affects every pocket of the County.” stated Prosecutor Grewal. “By doing so, we hope to encourage parents, children, educators and others to use this information to do their part to help prevent the next overdose,” said Grewal. “In the end, however, education is the key; if we can steer children and adults from the known pathways to heroin and opioid addiction, we can stem this rising epidemic.”
Prosecutor Grewal thanked Bergen County Executive James J. Tedesco, III, and Bergen County Sheriff Michael Saudino for their partnership and support of the BCPO’s efforts to combat the County’s heroin and opioid epidemic.
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