Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Addiction Hijacks The Brain, Creating Vicious Cycle Of Relapse For Those Trying To Recover
The opioid epidemic ravaging the United States has brought new impetus to understanding how addiction hijacks the brain. More and more, scientists are shifting their focus to what’s going on in the brain after people like Mooney go off drugs. Their quest has unveiled a troubling picture: Repeated drug use leads to long-term changes to the brain. Some of those changes, new research suggests, might be hard to reverse and might even intensify right after withdrawal, explaining why it is so hard to stay off drugs. (Wesphal, 4/19)
In a summit full of addiction experts, each looking for the next big solution to curb opioid abuse, everything from treatment policies to the containers holding prescription pills are being considered. Owners of several drug supply companies say prescription vials holding drugs have done little to slow the nation’s epidemic. With seven out of 10 people who abuse prescription opioids getting drugs from a friend or family member’s medicine cabinet, some medical entrepreneurs are pushing security measures from locks to iPhone alerts as a way to deter drug abuse. (Blau, 4/19)
And in the states —
As an outgrowth of the parish's Greater Than Heroin outreach effort - which includes the www.greaterthanheroin.com website - a clearinghouse of community resources, advocacy and news related to heroin addiction - [Bob] Stec has asked more than 300 religious leaders [to] speak about the issue to their congregations on April 23. The Easter season, with its message of renewal, provides a perfect opportunity to speak on the growing epidemic of opioid addiction, Stec said. (Lisik, 4/18)
Adams, Brown, Lawrence and Scioto counties are to receive money to bring the pilot program — called Ohio START (Sobriety, Treatment and Reducing Trauma) — to their communities, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said Tuesday. That makes 18 counties, all of them hard-hit by the state’s heroin and opioid-medication crisis, participating in the program. (Price, 4/18)
In a year in which Milwaukee County is preparing for an unprecedented number of fatal drug overdoses, add a new and particularly pernicious killer, carfentanil, which the county's medical examiner's office on Tuesday linked to two more deaths. And it's just beginning. (Stephenson, 4/18)
