Month: August 2018

Thomas Farley, Philadelphia’s health commissioner, said the new state-level data suggest that Pennsylvania’s opioid crisis is no longer confined to urban areas.

 

“We’ve always had a bigger heroin problem than the rest of the state,” he said. “What I’m struck by is how much of a problem we have in the rural areas that were previously untouched by this. The opioid crisis is raging through Pennsylvania like the wildfires are raging through California.”

 

He said the rise in fentanyl-related overdoses was particularly concerning.

 

“That’s the top drug here — and it’s 50 times as potent as heroin, much more likely to get people addicted, much more likely to cause an overdose,” he said. “It’s changed the entire nature of the problem.”

http://www2.philly.com/philly/health/addiction/fentanyl-is-killing-more-and-more-people-in-pennsylvania-20180821.html

By Aubrey Whelan

Of the 2,522 people who died after their release from city prisons between 2010 and 2016, a third died of overdoses, according to a city health department study published in the scientific journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence this month. And former inmates were particularly at risk in the first two weeks after their release. (It’s too early to tell whether the new buprenorphine program has had an effect on overdoses among former inmates, prison officials said.)

http://www.philly.com/philly/health/addiction/philadelphia-womens-prison-tries-bold-experiment-to-save-lives-give-inmates-a-treatment-opioid-20180802.html

By Aubrey Whelan