Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, was in Boston on Thursday to speak at a symposium sponsored by Boston University's Clinical and Translational Science Institute and Boston Medical Center's Grayken Center for Addiction. Before her talk, she sat down with the Globe to talk about marijuana legalization and the opioid crisis. Here are edited excerpts: * Dispensaries that sell legal marijuana will soon open in Massachusetts. What are your thoughts on pot legalization? The greatest mortality from drugs comes from legal drugs. The moment you make a drug legal, you're going to increase the number of people who get exposed to it, and therefore you increase the negative consequences from its use. When you legalize, you create an industry whose purpose is to make money selling those drugs. And how do you sell it? Mostly by enticing people to take them and entice them to take high quantities. [continues 540 words]
Dajia Brown cares for Brooklyn at their Somerville home. She credits a Boston Medical Center program for her progress. Last June, Dajia Brown embarked on a dangerous phase of life - so dangerous that many in her situation do not survive. It started when she gave birth to her daughter, Brooklyn, several months after entering treatment for addiction to fentanyl pills. The postpartum period, a tough time for many women, can be particularly challenging for women with opioid use disorder, putting them at high risk of relapse and overdose. [continues 982 words]
[photo] A Walgreens in Boston. An investigation by Attorney General Maura Healey found that some Walgreens pharmacies failed to monitor patients' drug use patterns and didn't use sound professional judgment when dispensing opioids and other controlled substances - a concern because of soaring overdose deaths in Massachusetts. Walgreens agreed to pay $200,000 and follow certain procedures for dispensing opioids, in a settlement filed Wednesday in Suffolk Superior Court. "Our records show," Walgreens spokesman Phil Caruso said in an e-mail, "that the prescriptions in question were dispensed to patients for a legitimate medical purpose and issued by licensed practitioners," suggesting the drugs were not diverted to the black market. [continues 828 words]
Doctors are being more careful with opioid prescriptions as addiction and its effects get more recognition. More than half of doctors across America are curtailing opioid prescriptions, and nearly 1 in 10 have stopped prescribing the drugs, according to a new nationwide online survey. But even as physicians retreat from opioids, some seem to have misgivings: More than one-third of the respondents said the reduction in prescribing has hurt patients with chronic pain. The survey, conducted for The Boston Globe by the SERMO physicians social network, offers fresh evidence of the changes in prescribing practices in response to the opioid crisis that has killed thousands in New England and elsewhere around the country. The deaths awakened fears of addiction and accidental overdose, and led to state and federal regulations aimed at reining in excessive prescribing. [continues 994 words]
More than ever, the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl is claiming lives in Massachusetts, fueling an overdose death toll that continues to rise, according to data released Wednesday by the state Department of Public Health. During the first half of 2016, deaths from opioid overdoses were higher than in the same period last year. That happened despite an apparent decline in the use of heroin and prescription drugs. Prescriptions for opioid painkillers were at their lowest level since early 2015, and heroin and prescription drugs were found less frequently in the bloodstreams of overdose victims than in the past. [continues 659 words]
The state has pulled the license of Dr. Tyrone S. Cushing, accusing him of recommending medical marijuana in 2013 for a visibly pregnant woman with a history of substance abuse. Cushing, who worked at CannaMed, a medical marijuana consultant service in Framingham, is the second doctor in recent days to have his license summarily suspended for improperly certifying patients as eligible to receive medical marijuana. In its summary suspension order Thursday, the Board of Registration in Medicine described Cushing as the state's "third-highest provider of medical marijuana certificates," having issued 4,649 certificates as of May 20 while working only two days a week. Cushing acknowledged he did not conduct any physical examination or obtain vital signs of any patients, and may have certified many pregnant women, according to the order. [continues 363 words]
More than half the people who died last year from opioid overdoses had the powerful drug fentanyl in their blood, according to data released Monday by the state Department of Public Health. The department's quarterly report on overdoses included information about fentanyl for the first time, confirming reports from law enforcement that the synthetic opioid - more powerful than morphine or heroin - may be playing a major role in the overdose epidemic. Dealers are believed to be lacing heroin with fentanyl, making it even more deadly. [continues 531 words]
Windia Rodriguez remembers the sting of the words hurled at her during a hospital stay a few years ago. "Crackhead." "Addict." Especially, she recalls the scorn in the voices that pronounced her "just an addict." "They treated me like I was beyond hope," Rodriguez said. But she found hope, and these days, free of drugs for four years, Rodriguez makes a point of adding two words to the standard salutation in her 12-step group. "I'm an addict," she says, "in recovery." [continues 1022 words]
CAMBRIDGE - Here in a nameless brick building, people addicted to drugs come to get what they need. Not heroin or other narcotics, but the accessories - and more. A smiling receptionist takes back used syringes and hands out sterile ones to those who register (no names needed; each client gets a number). A framed placard advises on needle selection. Members can also help themselves to tourniquets, cotton swabs, bandages, and other supplies. It may look like complicity, but the AIDS Action Committee's needle exchange in Central Square is no rogue operation. Decades of research show that needle exchanges prevent disease, do not increase drug use, and sometimes coax far-gone addicts into treatment. [continues 1257 words]
The death toll from opioids in Massachusetts continues to rise unabated despite months of intensifying efforts to combat the substance abuse crisis, new data revealed Wednesday. Estimates from the state Department of Public Health show that during the first half of 2015, the number of deaths from opioid overdoses - 684 - increased about 6 percent from the same period last year. "It correlates with what we're hearing anecdotally," said Vic DiGravio, president of the Association for Behavioral Healthcare, which represents community-based treatment providers. Demand for care remains high, he said, and treatment providers have recently been encountering a new phenomenon - overdoses occurring in treatment programs' waiting rooms and in the neighborhoods right outside their doors. [continues 691 words]
Tom Coderre was arrested for cocaine possession in Rhode Island. Michael Botticelli, driving drunk, once crashed into a disabled truck on a Massachusetts highway. Jonathan Goyer nearly died from a heroin overdose in Pawtucket, R.I. Paolo del Vecchio struggled with mental illness and drug use starting in childhood. Eduardo Vega attempted suicide. These five men - now bearing such titles as "executive director," "CEO," and even "czar" - appeared at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to announce new survey results on drug use and mental illness among Americans. [continues 891 words]
BROCKTON - The state's second medical marijuana dispensary opened Friday morning, receiving what its president described as brisk but orderly business. "Overall, our patients are very happy today," said David B. Noble, president of In Good Health, which was granted a 90-day waiver on Wednesday that allows it to sell marijuana that has not been fully tested for pesticides and other contaminants. Noble said that by midday Friday, his dispensary had seen 100 to 150 customers at its 1200 W. Chestnut St. facility, a sprawling one-story building in the city's southeastern corner, near the Easton line. Each patient spent about an hour and 15 minutes waiting in line and making their purchase, he said. [continues 349 words]
Study Finds New Faces of Addiction Rebecca Kaczynski doesn't fit the traditional image of a heroin addict. The daughter of a bank vice president and an assistant school principal, she grew up in a loving, intact, upper-middle-class family in the Central Massachusetts town of Dudley. The 23-year-old does, however, fit an emerging demographic described in a federal study of substance use trends released Tuesday: Women, people age 18 to 25, and those with higher incomes and private insurance have been increasingly falling victim to the drug. [continues 863 words]
The Massachusetts Medical Society released opioid-prescribing guidelines Thursday intended to help physicians make sure patients in pain get the correct treatment without contributing to the epidemic of opioid abuse. "Most physicians do prescribe quite responsibly," said Dr. Dennis M. Dimitri, president of the statewide physicians association, which has nearly 25,000 members. "We realize sometimes overprescribing can be a problem." The medical society also has started offering its online and in-person pain-management courses free of charge to doctors and other health professionals (nonmembers had paid $11 to $132, while members paid about half that). [continues 591 words]
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health on Wednesday selected the first company allowed to grow marijuana for medical use, a milestone in the troubled effort to carry out the state's 2012 medical marijuana law. Alternative Therapies Group Inc. received permission to operate a dispensary at 50 Grove St., Salem, and a cultivation site at 10 Industrial Way, Amesbury. But the sale of medical marijuana is still months away. The seeds need at least three months to grow. Then, ATG will face further review, including tests of the plants and inspections of the company's transportation plans. [continues 417 words]
Patients Who Qualify Will Receive a Registration Card Which Allows Them to Possess 12 Plants and 2 1/2 Ounces of Marijuana. People who want to obtain marijuana for medical purposes, such as treating chronic pain or nausea, can start applying for registration cards from the state Health Department. Cardholders will be protected from prosecution by state authorities for growing or possessing small quantities of the otherwise illegal drug. An application form was posted online yesterday at www.health.ri.gov/hsr/mmp/index.php . Forms are also available in Room 104 at the Health Department, 3 Capitol Hill, Providence. [continues 333 words]
The Law Doesn't Say Where the Marijuana Will Come From, but It's Understood That It Will Be Obtained Illegally From Drug Dealers, or Grown From Seeds Obtained Illegally. The medical marijuana law that passed yesterday allows doctors to recommend that patients obtain from illegal sources a drug of unknown potency and unknown purity. This is not how doctors normally prescribe treatment. But if the longstanding support of the Rhode Island Medical Society is any indication, many are willing to go this route -- because of the potential benefits to patients who can't get relief from pain, nausea, muscle spasms and other problems. [continues 966 words]
