Report: Louisiana still battling fentanyl crisis
By Nolan McKendry | The Center Square
Louisiana continues to face one of the most severe drug overdose crises in the nation, according to a new analysis of federal mortality data.
The state ranks seventh nationwide in overdose deaths, averaging 39.4 deaths per 100,000 residents — 43% above the national average of 27.5.
The findings come from a study by Georgia-based Bader Scott Injury Lawyers, which analyzed five years of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The report shows Louisiana averaged 1,828 overdose deaths annually from 2018 to 2022, with fatalities more than doubling over that period. The state saw its highest number of overdose deaths in 2021, with 2,463 lives lost—up from 1,140 in 2018.
Synthetic opioids, particularly fentanyl, are driving the surge. Recent FDA data cited in the study show emergency room visits for fentanyl overdoses have jumped 320% since 2019, and synthetic opioids are now detected in 76% of all drug-related deaths nationwide.
Southern states dominate the top 10 in overdose mortality, with West Virginia leading the nation at 65.9 deaths per 100,000 residents. Louisiana is not far behind, and several of its parishes are among the state's hardest hit.
According to the Louisiana Department of Health, Jefferson Parish recorded the most opioid-involved deaths in a recent year (193), followed by St. Tammany (84), Lafayette (68), and Rapides (63).
While overdose deaths in Louisiana have declined slightly from their 2021 peak — dropping from 15,665 in 2021 to 13,937 — the number remains elevated compared to 2016, when the state reported 12,566 fatal overdoses.
'This study reveals the extent to which Louisiana has been devastated by the opioid epidemic,' said a Bader Scott spokesman. 'The crisis is fueled by a combination of prescription painkillers, heroin, and increasingly, synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Socioeconomic challenges, limited healthcare access, and geographic factors have all contributed to this deadly trend.'
Experts say addressing the crisis will require a multi-pronged approach: Expanding access to addiction treatment, making overdose-reversing medications like naloxone more widely available and investing in prevention efforts targeted at vulnerable communities.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Wire
2 hours ago
- Business Wire
Wellness Innercell Expands into Indonesian Home Shopping Market with Joint Care
CHANGWON, South Korea--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Wellness Innercell, a cosmetics manufacturer and distributor of health functional food, announced that it will launch its flagship health supplement product, 'Joint Care,' on Indonesian home shopping channels starting this October. 'In addition to our ongoing exports to the U.S., we will focus on pioneering new markets in Southeast Asia, starting with Indonesia in the second half of this year.' Share According to the company, Joint Care addresses the side effects and cost burden often associated with conventional joint supplements. It helps relieve joint pain while supporting cartilage protection, nerve and muscle health, dental care, bone density improvement, enhanced physical performance, immune system function, and energy production. Certified by the Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety as a health functional food, it contains key active ingredients at the maximum daily allowable dosage and includes probiotics to promote digestive health. Leveraging a multi-formula technology, Joint Care combines a variety of functional ingredients into a single all-in-one tablet, offered in convenient PTP (Press-Through Package) form for easy carrying and consumption. 'In addition to our ongoing exports to the U.S., we will focus on pioneering new markets in Southeast Asia, starting with Indonesia in the second half of this year,' said Kang Ik-geun, CEO of Wellness Innercell. About Wellness Innercell Wellness Innercell is a Korea-based manufacturer and distributor specializing in cosmetics and health functional foods, dedicated to delivering innovative, science-backed solutions for better living. Leveraging advanced formulation technology and strict quality standards, Wellness Innercell aims to expand its global presence and provide trusted health products to consumers worldwide.
Associated Press
7 hours ago
- Associated Press
CDC shooting marks latest in a string of hostility directed at health workers. Many aren't surprised
ATLANTA (AP) — A barrage of bullets launched at the headquarters of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week by a man authorities say was angry over COVID-19 vaccinations is the latest attack directed at health care workers amid hostility lingering from the pandemic. Some public health care workers say the shooting that killed a police officer and rattled the CDC campus shouldn't be surprising in the face of ongoing misinformation and animosity about the safety of immunizations. 'All of us, anybody who stands up for science or vaccines, will at some level get hate mail or a phone call that's unnerving or a death threat,' said Paul Offit, the co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine. Just four years ago, while hospitals overflowed with unvaccinated patients, school board members, local leaders and doctors were regularly confronted in public with taunts comparing them to the Taliban, Nazis and leaders of Japanese internment camps. Sometimes the conflicts descended into violence and harassment. The distrust and anger that grew since then has been amplified by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said Offit, who heads the vaccine education center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Kennedy has been a leading voice in spreading false information about vaccines, scientists and public health leaders, often using heated rhetoric that says they have caused mass death and injury. People he describes in such language have said his comments have led to threats, intimidation and even violence. Kennedy denounces violence but criticizes CDC's work Kennedy, who toured the CDC campus on Monday, said no one should face violence while working to protect the health of others and called political violence wrong. But he went on to criticize the agency's pandemic response. 'One of the things that we saw during COVID is that the government was overreaching in its efforts to persuade the public to get vaccinated, and they were saying things that are not always true,' Kennedy said during a television interview with Scripps News later in the day. A spokesperson for Kennedy blasted any notion that blamed vaccine misinformation for Friday's attack. 'This narrative is pure fiction, built on anonymous complaints and a willful disregard for the facts,' said Andrew Nixon of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 'Secretary Kennedy is not advancing an 'anti-vaccine agenda' — he is advancing a pro-safety, pro-transparency, and pro-accountability agenda.' Authorities have said that 30-year-old Patrick Joseph White had written about his discontent with the COVID-19 vaccine before he opened fire on the CDC. White also had verbalized thoughts of suicide, which led to law enforcement being contacted several weeks before the shooting, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. White died at the scene of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Friday after killing DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose. Shooting rattles CDC campus Following the attack, CDC employees were asked to scrape off old CDC parking decals from their vehicles. But even before that, some workers had taken steps to become less visible, including not wearing their public health service uniform, said Yolanda Jacobs, a union leader who represents some CDC workers. The CDC's new director told employees this week that no act of violence can diminish their mission to protect public health. 'We know that misinformation can be dangerous. Not only to health, but to those that trust us and those we want to trust,' Dr. Susan Monarez told employees during an 'all-hands' meeting Tuesday, her first since the attack capped her first full week on campus as director. The federal agency, tasked with tracking diseases and responding to health threats, has been hit by widespread staff cuts, key resignations and heated controversy over long-standing CDC vaccine policies upended by Kennedy. 'What happened on Friday is a direct result of that misinformation,' said Sarah Boim, a former CDC worker whose job was targeted for elimination earlier this year. 'Health Secretary Kennedy is one of the biggest pushers of misinformation.' The shooting, she said, left her in tears. 'My friends and family still work in those buildings,' she said. 'My mom works in one of those buildings.' In the aftermath, officials are assessing security and encouraging staff to report any new threats, including those based on misinformation about the CDC and its vaccine work. Anti-vaccine tension has been building Despite its prominence since the pandemic, anti-vaccine rhetoric leading to harassment and violence took root before then. In 2019, an anti-vaccine activist assaulted California state Sen. Richard Pan, streaming it live on Facebook, after Pan sponsored a bill to make it more difficult to get a vaccine exemption. Another threw blood at Pan and other lawmakers. The attacks came after Kennedy spoke outside the California Capitol, two large posters behind him featured Pan's image, with the word 'LIAR' stamped across his face in blood-red paint. Pan, a pediatrician, blames Kennedy for what happened then and now at the CDC. 'And you wonder why someone would go shoot up the CDC,' Pan said. 'Because he basically told them that those are the people you should hurt.' ___ Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri, and Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio.
Miami Herald
8 hours ago
- Miami Herald
Aetna, AvMed fought to run Miami-Dade County employee health care plan. Who won?
Miami-Dade's more than 31,000 county employees are on track for a new insurance provider after Aetna ousted longtime administrator AvMed in a County Commission vote on Wednesday. The planned change would bring the county a new insurance administrator for the first time since George W. Bush was president and raises the stakes for Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who recommended the switch as a way to save money during a budget crunch. Aetna, a national insurance company owned by the CVS pharmacy chain, claims its national purchasing power produces the kind of discounts that can save Miami-Dade about $40 million a year over rates offered by AvMed, a Florida-based provider with headquarters in Doral. 'We're going to try and reduce the cost curve,' said Carladenise Edwards, chief administrative officer under Levine Cava. 'As we do that, the county will save money over time.' While Miami-Dade commissioners approved the switch in a 7-to-2 vote, AvMed already has a legal challenge that could stall or overturn the decision. As commissioners initially prepared to decide the contract in a last-minute vote last month, AvMed sued, with claims that the Levine Cava administration violated bidding rules in how it recommended awarding the contract to Aetna — allegations the county denies. That vote got delayed, prompting a rare special meeting on Wednesday dedicated solely to the proposed Aetna contract recommended by the mayor. Voting against the switch were Commissioners Roberto Gonzalez and Danielle Cohen Higgins. Commissioners Marleine Bastien, Juan Carlos Bermudez and Eileen Higgins did not attend the meeting. Barring a judge's intervention, the commission vote sets up a scramble to replace the insurance administrator for one of South Florida's largest workforces just weeks ahead of the open-enrollment session that typically begins in late October. AvMed first won the county health care contract in 2007. Like most large governments, Miami-Dade pays for its own employee health care costs and hires an insurance company to administer the billing and reimbursement process for about $600 million in claims per year. The administrator earns a yearly fee for the work — Aetna charges $15 million and AvMed, $10 million — but the county's main costs come from the reimbursement rates negotiated by the administrator for prescriptions, medical procedures and hospitalizations. Two consultants hired by Miami-Dade concluded the Aetna rates would save Miami-Dade about $40 million when compared to AvMed's rates — math AvMed disputed as flawed. Commissioner Oliver Gilbert, who sponsored the legislation approving the Aetna contract, said it made no sense for board members to try and reach their own conclusions in the complex field of actuarial methods, repriced health care claims and shared savings in self-funded insurance plans. 'I'm left with the people we pay to analyze that,' Gilbert said as the meeting neared its third hour and Cohen Higgins and Gonzalez pressed the administration on the competing numbers. 'This is theater at this point.' Cohen Higgins said the board lacked the information and explanations needed to justify a major switch in the county's health care landscape on a shortened timetable. 'I need more,' she said. Levine Cava did not attend the meeting. In the sharpest words of the day, Gonzalez blamed what he called a flawed rollout by Levine Cava last month for causing anxiety among county workers about the proposed Aetna switch. 'I don't trust the mayor — and I want to trust the mayor,' Gonzalez said. Namita Uppal, the county's procurement director and top negotiator on the health care contract, emphasized insurance fees won't change for county employees or the retirees that continue receiving coverage from Miami-Dade. She also said Aetna was already helping answer employees' questions about the potential switch and whether existing AvMed providers will be covered under Aetna. 'I haven't found an example where Aetna came back and said: 'It's not covered,'' she said.
