On Monday, a federal district judge ordered the release of a government database that tracks the shipments of every single prescription pain pill manufactured in the U.S. In an analysis of that data, The Washington Post found between 2006 and 2012, 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pills were shipped to […]
Read MoreOpioid Epidemic
‘They Are Invisible’: Rural Homelessness, Made Worse By Opioid Crisis, Presents Special Challenges
This article was originally published by Ohio Valley ReSource. Charles “Country” Bowers takes long, quick strides down a worn dirt path and is soon in front of a thicket of bushes made deep and tall by spring rains. He’s leading me on a tour of camps made by homeless people […]
Read MoreStudy: Closure of Rural Harm Reduction Program ‘Fundamentally Changed’ Health of a City
Fentanyl-related Deaths Are the Highest in W.Va. This Is What They’re Doing about It.
West Virginia has the highest per-capita drug-overdose death rate in the country. And while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported a recent decline in overall drug overdose deaths nationwide, deaths involving fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, are on the rise. West Virginia leads the nation in that rate […]
Read MorePurdue Pharma Taps a Gilded Age History of Pharmaceutical Fraud
Newly unsealed documents from a lawsuit by the state of Massachusetts allege that Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin and other addictive opioids, actively sniffed out new, sinister ways to cash in on the opioid crisis. Despite years of negative press coverage, unwanted attention from regulators, multi-million dollar fines and several […]
Read MoreHIV Cluster Found in West Virginia County with High Rate of Opioid Use
An active HIV cluster of 28 known cases has been confirmed in Cabell County, West Virginia, primarily among the area’s population of intravenous drug users, according to the state’s Bureau for Public Health. The cluster, tracked from January 2018 to the present, represents a sharp uptick from the baseline average […]
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