“Just as local governments had to lead during the HIV epidemic, cities like ours will be on the forefront of saving lives in the opioid crisis,” James Garrow, a spokesman for Philadelphia’s Department of Public Health, said in a statement Tuesday. “The federal government should focus its enforcement on the pill mills and illegal drug traffickers who supply the poison that is killing our residents, not on preventing public health officials from acting to keep Philadelphians from dying.”
Tag: opioids
Overdose Awareness Day Press Release
PHILADELPHIA–In response to a public health crisis unlike anything in the last century, the City of Philadelphia recognizes International Overdose Awareness Day. This is a global event held on August 31st every year that aims to raise awareness of overdose and reduce the stigma of a drug-related death.
https://mailchi.mp/phila.gov/international-overdose-awareness-day-and-new-online-city-resources
Overdose Awareness Day Recognition
Philadelphia had close to 1,300 overdose deaths last year — the vast majority from opioids — and almost 300 in the first quarter of this year. And if you think those statistics are far removed from your life and reflect a moral failing on the part of the victims, Health Department spokesman James Garrow says, that is exactly why the city chose to observe this day.
“This day really hopes to bring it out into light that overdose happens to regular people and we should all be more cognizant of the humanity that’s suffering with these problems,” Garrow said.
By Pat Loeb
Response to Rosenstein OpEd 2
A spokesperson for the city said in an email that federal authorities were focusing on the wrong thing.
“The federal government should focus its enforcement on the pill mills and illegal drug traffickers who supply the poison that is killing our residents, not on preventing public health officials from acting to keep Philadelphians from dying,” the spokesperson said. “Instead of threatening cities and states, they should bring possible solutions to the table that will save lives.”
By John Mitchell
Response to Rosenstein OpEd
James Garrow, a spokesman for the health department, said Rosenstein’s op-ed doesn’t change the evidence showing that overdose prevention sites save lives.
“The federal government should focus its enforcement on the pill mills and illegal drug traffickers who supply the poison that is killing our residents, not on preventing public health officials from acting to keep Philadelphians from dying,” he said.
By Victoria Colliver, Dan Goldberg, and Rachel Roubein
Pennsylvania Overdose Death Stats
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.”
By Aubrey Whelan
Treating Opioids Addiction in Prison
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.)
By Aubrey Whelan
July 20 – 21, 2018 Overdose Cluster 3
The health department reported additional test results late Friday on drug packets related to last weekend’s overdose spike, concluding, “The Department of Public Health now believes that 5F-ADB was the primary cause of the cluster of patients with these adverse drug reactions.”
https://whyy.org/articles/synthetic-marijuana-detected-in-drug-sample-from-philly-overdose-spike/
By Joel Wolfram
July 20 – 21, 2018 Overdose Cluster 2
“We don’t want to make a definite confirmation until we know more,” said James Garrow, spokesman for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.
Garrow stated the heroin tested by the Willow Grove lab came from an independent purchase, not from an overdose victim, and that the samples were sold outside city limits, and not near where the bulk of the overdoses occurred in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood.
“That said, the reactions that victims displayed upon being revived is consistent with the synthetic cannabinoid being present. We don’t want to make a definite confirmation until we know more,” Garrow wrote in an email.
By Aubrey Whelan
July 20 – 21, 2018 Overdose Cluster
Between Friday and Saturday, at least 165 people around the city overdosed — an unprecedented number, health officials said, and thought to have been driven by the drug Freeman bought. Health officials believe it may have been heroin cut with an anticholinergic, a substance found in muscle relaxers and the antihistamine diphenhydramine (Benadryl) that causes dangerous side effects.
By Aubrey Whelan
The Collected Works of Jim Garrow 