���ϳԹ���

Physicians thinking about prescribing opioid painkillers for women around the time of delivery should think twice, a new study suggests, because some go on to “persistent” opioid use. A report published Friday in JAMA Network Open examined opioid prescriptions among more than 300,000 women who gave birth between 2008 and 2016. Nearly half were given an opioid prescription shortly before or after giving birth. Among the women who filled the prescriptions, about 2% showed signs of “persistent” opioid use, defined as two subsequent refills within one year after the delivery. (Joseph, 7/26)

Two and a half billion pain pills. That's how many opioids were supplied to Tennessee over six years, according to data recently released by The Washington Post. The data from the Drug Enforcement Administration shows the top distributors, manufacturers and pharmacies for pain pills across the nation — a glimpse into the legal but opaque world of opioid prescriptions. One out of every three opioid overdose deaths nationwide involved prescription pain pills in 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Reicher and Hineman, 7/29)

A recent Washington Post analysis of a federal Drug Enforcement Administration database shows nearly 290 million prescription pain pills were supplied to New Hampshire from 2006 to 2012. The national analysis broke down the data by county, revealing that Grafton County had the highest rate of oxycodone and hydrocodone prescriptions in the state, amounting to 38.5 pills per person per year. There were 23.7 million pain pills supplied during that time period, with more than four million pills supplied by Dartmouth-Hitchcock Pharmacy in Lebanon. There were 36 pills per person per year supplied in both Merrimack and Strafford counties in that period, according to the Washington Post. (Wickham, 7/28)

Syringe exchanges, once seen as an answer to the public health crisis of AIDS, are coming under criticism from elected officials in parts of Washington who believe they are making a new public health crisis — opioids — worse. Syringe exchanges were born in Washington in the ’80s. Today, 39 states have them, and the practice has been endorsed by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In response to the opioid epidemic, hundreds of syringe exchanges have opened across the country in the past two years, according to Dr. Paul LaKosky, who helps run the North American Syringe Exchange Network. (Greenstone, 7/28)

Health officials have hailed the Centers for Disease Control’s preliminary data for 2018 as a rare bit of positive news, with drug-related deaths declining about 5% after reaching a historic high of 72,000 in 2017. It would be the first year-over-year decrease since 1990, before the opioid epidemic ramped up. But even as most states are projected to show decreases when death reports are finalized, Kansas and Missouri are among those that are not. (Marso, 7/29)

It’s estimated that out of every 10 people with a substance use disorder, four to six reach the point where they no longer use drugs in a harmful way, although getting there takes time and often multiple tries. How do they do it? What enables people to get and stay sober? (Freyer, 7/27)