Latest news with #opioidepidemic
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
'Being smart on crime' leading to downtrend of overdoses
TUNKHANNOCK, WYOMING COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU)— A local community is doing its part to combat the opioid epidemic by handing out a potentially life saving drug Narcan. It's a medication that counteracts the effects of opiate related overdoses. Wyoming County District Attorney Joe Peters, along with his community awareness group, set up shop in Tunkhannock in an effort to get this potential life-saver in as many hands as possible. For years, Wyoming County has been putting up a fight against the opioid epidemic through community events like this one. DAs share crime trends in Luzerne and Lackawanna counties The anonymous drive-through event hopes get Narcan in the hands of as many residents as possible, something District Attorney Joe Peters calls being 'smart on crime'. 'We just want to get Narcan out there. It's like a fire extinguisher. There's one in every building because, you're not trying to encourage a fire, you're trying to have something there to stop the fire,' said District Attorney Peters. Inside the kits, Narcan and instructions on how to administer it. Narcan is a nasal form of the drug naloxone. It binds with opioid receptors in the brain to reverse the effects of an overdose. The drug is not harmful to the user. 'That's the magic and the miracle of this drug,' expressed District Attorney Peters. While opioid related deaths are on the downtrend here in Wyoming County, District Attorney Joe Peters says distribution events like this one are crucial to continuing the fight against opioid abuse. One woman attending the event tells me she lost her brother to a fentanyl overdose only a few years ago. She says she wishes resources like these could have been available then. 'I think not only being aware that this, you know, is in our communities, this fentanyl, but being knowledgeable that there are things like Narcan that can make a difference,' said Mary Scarpa, Tunkhannock. She says now, she carries Narcan wherever she goes just in case someone needs it. 'If the situation ever occurs that, you know, I can help somebody out then I certainly would like to. It is really difficult to lose somebody to an overdose and so I don't wish that upon anybody,' expressed Scarpa. Peters says he hopes to have more Narcan distribution events throughout Wyoming County in the future. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
$4.5M from opioid settlement will be used to bolster Gateway Center resources
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Millions of dollars in opioid settlement funds will be used for services throughout the Gateway Center in Albuquerque. $4.5 million has been allocated to boost recovery housing, the gateway's medical sobering center, and the first responder receiving area. This money is part of a larger $20 million package to bolster access to treatment and housing. To date, nearly $6 million in opioid settlement funding has been allocated to gateway recovery for both construction and operations. City of Albuquerque looks to catch up on backlog of needed trash bins 'This is such an important thing for the community, and I think that it's been a long time coming, and it hasn't been an easy road. But I think we're going to see payoff and see the ability to help people in this building,' said Albuquerque City Councilor Tammy Fiebelkorn. Over the last several years, billions of dollars have been awarded to cities, states, and counties around the country. It comes from drug manufacturers and distributors, settling lawsuits for their role in the opioid epidemic. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Rep. Roy offers compromise on minimum mandatory prison for drug crimes
A key House committee endorsed minimum mandatory prison terms for drug sellers who cause death or possess significant amounts of fentanyl, but with an escape hatch that would let a judge issue a different, lesser punishment if an individual offender met several qualifying conditions. House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee Chairman Terry Roy, R-Deerfield, told his panel he spent weeks fine-tuning his proposal under one package combining the two Senate bills that are top priorities of Gov. Kelly Ayotte: • Fentanyl possession (SB 14): This would impose at least a 3½- year prison term for anyone having at least 20 grams of fentanyl and a seven-year minimum for someone caught with at least 50 grams and, • Death resulting (SB 15): Anyone caught selling drugs known to have caused the death of another would face at least 10 years in prison with a term of up to life behind bars. Roy said he started out knowing full well about the long-held skepticism of the House of Representatives to such bills. 'Many of us on both sides of the aisle are not big fans of minimum mandatory (bills),' Roy began. 'We are all aware of many studies that conclude they are not quite effective in reducing crime.' But Roy said the devastation of fentanyl that fueled New Hampshire's opioid epidemic made him determined to find some compromise language. 'We do know that fentanyl is destroying so many lives in our state and people bringing in this poison into our state have to be sent a message that we are done playing,' Roy said. Roy's amendment would allow a judge to hand down a different punishment if that offender: • Had no recent record: No prior conviction for violent felonies or similar drug offenses within the past seven years; • Had no guns: The offender is not involved in any potential or threatened use of firearms or other deadly weapons; • Was not a player: The accused is not to be seen by authorities as a leader of the drug operation; • Had significant cooperation: To the extent possible, the offender has to show they have provided substantial assistance to law enforcement in related prosecutions and, • Had no deception: The offender can't be involved in any way in selling drugs with fentanyl hidden inside them. To receive a lesser punishment, the defendants would have to submit to court-ordered substance use evaluation and complete within nine months drug treatment as long as it's available in the state. Under Roy's proposal, anyone caught violating their probation would be sentenced to a minimum term, three and a half years for a fentanyl crime, at least five years for causing someone's death. Critics: Minimum mandatory looks tough but accomplishes little Completion of a lesser sanction would require at least 250 hours of community service for a fentanyl crime, 300 hours for someone who causes another's death. Rep, Buzz Scherr, D-Portsmouth, was a leading appellate criminal defense lawyer. 'I have substantial problems with mandatory minimums given the history of the war on drugs. Incarcerations have been shown not to have the kind of impact we intended it to have even though the intent was good,' Scherr said. Roy's panel broke along party lines on the proposal 9-7, with all Republican members in support and all Democrats in opposition. House Democrats praised Roy for trying to soften the minimum mandatory provisions. Rep. David Meuse, D-Portsmouth, said there's no evidence that judges in the state have issued lenient penalties against serious drug dealers. 'What I am not seeing is how this bill makes anything any better,' Meuse said. 'This is an opportunity to perform in politics.' While campaigning for governor, Ayotte said she learned in the 15 years since she was attorney general New Hampshire had fallen behind with tough criminal penalties for drug crimes compared to surrounding states. 'We're out of step and I'm for restoring New Hampshire's image for having among the toughest penalties on fentanyl in the nation,' Ayotte said during a recent interview. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Bill Gannon, R-Sandown, sponsored both bills and has been pressuring Roy's committee for weeks to take action. Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais came to the State House in January to testify for both bills. It's unclear whether the Senate and Ayotte will support Roy's changes. Roy is right about the House's past on the topic with libertarian Republicans often joining Democrats against these bills. A year ago, then-Gov. Chris Sununu supported these two ideas that cleared the Senate. The House last spring voted 340-24 to block the fentanyl bill's passage by placing it on the table and sent the other one off to study. What's Next: The full House of Representatives early next month will vote on whether to support Roy's compromise. Prospects: There's still good odds this happens, but this changes the calculus a bit. Assuming Roy can get his bill through if the Senate balks at it, this could face more talks before a conference committee to reach consensus between the House and Senate. klandrigan@
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
How the US turned the tide on drug overdose deaths
In 2020 and 2021, before I came to Vox, I worked as the future correspondent at Axios — yes, that was the actual job title — and I found myself writing almost solely about the Covid-19 pandemic, or major trends that appeared to be driven by the pandemic. One of those trends was an alarming rise in drug overdose deaths. The trajectory was already bad before Covid: Between the widespread prescription and misuse of legal opioids and then the introduction of the ultra-powerful drug fentanyl to the illicit drug supply, overdose deaths in the US began taking off in the early 2010s. But the closure of treatment facilities during the pandemic and the isolation of users led to a sudden spike in deaths: In the year leading up to September 2020, as I wrote in April 2021, more than 87,000 Americans died of drug overdoses, a higher total than any 12-month period of the opioid epidemic up to that point. After publishing that piece, I received a letter from a reader, who said her son had been one of those 87,000 deaths. She begged me to give this issue more coverage, to remind my readers that behind the Covid pandemic, there was a shadow epidemic of drug deaths, of lost sons and daughters and husbands and wives. People had to stop closing their eyes to the toll of death and pain. In the years that followed, the toll only continued to grow, however, with deaths reaching 110,000 in 2023. There seemed to be no answer for one of the worst public health crises in a generation. But now, at long last, we finally appear to be turning the corner on the drug overdose crisis. Provisional figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Vital Statistics System released this week show that some 27,000 fewer Americans died of a drug overdose in 2024 than in 2023. That year-on-year drop is the steepest single-year decline since the government first began keeping track of overdose deaths 45 years ago. It means that drug deaths are now finally coming back down to pre-pandemic levels — and that we can make progress on what can seem like the most intractable social ills. To put that 27,000 drop in deaths into perspective, think of it this way: It adds up to three lives saved every hour for an entire year. What's remarkable about the rapid drop in overdose deaths is just how widespread the trend is. Forty-five states recorded declines in deaths, with Ohio and West Virginia — two states that have suffered more than almost any other from the opioid epidemic — leading the way. Only a handful of states, mostly in the Northwest, where the epidemic started later, experienced increases. While synthetic opioids, which mostly means fentanyl, are still responsible for the vast majority of overdose deaths, deaths from such drugs are falling faster than any other, declining by 36 percent year over year. One of the biggest factors behind the decline is the growing availability of naloxone, an opioid antagonist. If administered in the immediate aftermath of an overdose, naloxone has been shown to be close to 99 percent effective in preventing death. The key is speed — even the fastest emergency medical responders may not make it to the scene in time to save someone suffering an overdose. But recent policies to make naloxone available over the counter, and to advise users to have it on hand, have made it possible to bring back thousands of people who otherwise would have died. While the pandemic directly led to a significant spike in overdose deaths, policies that came out of Covid have helped curb the toll, including telehealth access to medicine-based treatment options for addiction like buprenorphine. All of these programs have been paid for in part by the billions of dollars in opioid-settlement cash from drug companies like Johnson & Johnson, which began flowing to state and local governments in 2024. Tougher enforcement on fentanyl has played a role as well. Lastly — and less positively — the sheer number of overdose deaths in the past few years has depleted the number of people at highest risk. Like an infectious disease epidemic that slows down as it begins to run out of new people to infect, the overdose epidemic burned so hot and killed so many that drug users who were left were less vulnerable to fatal overdoses. The news isn't all good. While synthetic opioids like fentanyl appear to be in a steep decline, deaths actually rose last year from stimulants like meth and cocaine, with production of the latter surging to new highs. The increase in deaths in a handful of states like Alaska and Washington demonstrates that in some parts of the country, at least, there are still populations that remain highly vulnerable to fatal overdoses. Most worryingly, the Trump administration's draft budget proposes major cuts to naloxone distribution, which could take the most potent tool for stopping overdose deaths out of the hands of those who need it most. Still, we should recognize this new data for what it is — evidence that, with effort, we can reverse the course of one of the biggest public health threats the US faces. Thousands of people are alive today who, if nothing had changed since I was writing about this epidemic in 2021, might have suffered a worse fate. Drug addiction is a horrible disease that can destroy futures, families, and lives. But where there is life, there is hope. Every overdose victim brought back by a spray of naloxone has another chance to change their future, and ensure that they won't become another statistic. A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!
