heroin

See the following -

Drugs Are Killing So Many People in Ohio That Cold-Storage Trailers Are Being Used as Morgues

Kristine Phillips | The Washington Post | March 16, 2017

By about 3 p.m. Friday, a county morgue in east Ohio was already full — and more bodies were expected. Rick Walters, an investigator for the Stark County coroner's office, had just left for two death scenes: a suicide and an overdose. From the road, he called the director of the Ohio Emergency Management Agency to ask for help. He needed more space, he explained — specifically, a cold-storage trailer to act as an overflow morgue...

Read More »

Heroin Taking Oxy's Place For More Addicts

Nicole Brochu | Sun Sentinel | February 19, 2013

The state's war on pill mills is making an impact, but there's a troubling byproduct: a surge in the number of people now hooked on heroin. Read More »

New Wave Of Heroin Claims Hoffman And Others

Staff Writer | Washington Post | February 4, 2014

Heroin was supposed to be an obsolete evil, a blurry memory of a dangerous drug that dwelled in some dark recess of American culture.But smack never really disappeared. It comes in waves, and one such swell is cresting across the nation, sparking widespread worry among government officials and driving up overdose deaths — including, it appears, that of Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. Read More »

Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Death Points To Broader Opioid Drug Epidemic

Joel Achenbach | Washington Post | February 7, 2014

The death last Sunday of ­Oscar-winning actor Philip ­Seymour Hoffman at age 46 ­focused media attention on the nationwide surge in heroin use and overdoses. But the very real heroin epidemic is framed by an even more dramatic increase since the beginning of the century in overdoses from pharmaceutical drugs known as opioids. Read More »

Secret Document Trove Reveals Bold ‘Crusade’ to Make OxyContin a Blockbuster

David Armstrong | STAT | September 22, 2016

The doughnut ploy, highlighted in a trove of internal documents obtained by STAT, shows the lengths to which Abbott went to hook in doctors and make OxyContin a billion-dollar blockbuster. The sales force bought takeout dinners for doctors and met them at bookstores to pay for their purchases. In memos, the sales team referred to the marketing of the drug as a “crusade,” and their boss called himself the “King of Pain.”

Read More »

The First Count of Fentanyl Deaths in 2016: Up 540% in Three Years

Josh Katz | The New York Times | September 2, 2017

Drug overdoses killed roughly 64,000 people in the United States last year, according to the first governmental account of nationwide drug deaths to cover all of 2016. It’s a staggering rise of more than 22 percent over the 52,404 drug deaths recorded the previous year — and even higher than The New York Times’s estimate in June, which was based on earlier preliminary data. Drug overdoses are expected to remain the leading cause of death for Americans under 50, as synthetic opioids — primarily fentanyl and its analogues — continue to push the death count higher...

Read More »