Tag: opioid epidemic

Pentagon Finally Stops Hiding Military Overdose Epidemic

THE U.S. ARMY Special Forces, better known as the Green Berets, has a serious problem with substance abuse and fatal drug overdoses. The same is true of the Army’s two most important infantry divisions: the 101st Airborne Division and the 82nd Airborne Division.

That’s the takeaway of data released by the Pentagon this week to a group of five U.S. senators, led by Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey. Markey, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and others grew concerned about rising drug use in the military after reading a report in the September issue of Rolling Stone that at least 14 and as many as 30 American soldiers had died in 2020 and 2021 of overdoses at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Fort Bragg is the headquarters of the Special Forces, as well as the top-secret Joint Special Operations Command, the “black ops” component of the military.

The senators wrote a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in late September requesting detailed statistics, going back five years, on accidental overdoses in the ranks. “We share your concern that drug overdose is a serious problem,” the Pentagon’s undersecretary for personnel and readiness wrote in response this week. “We must work to do better.”

A total of 15,293 American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines overdosed on illicit drugs from 2017 to 2022, according to a compendium of data and analysis enclosed with the letter. Of those, 332 cases were fatal.

Consistent with Rolling Stone’s recent reporting, the data showed a rising long-term trend, followed by a sharp spike in overdose deaths among active-duty military men in 2020 and 2021. Fentanyl was by far the biggest killer, accounting for more than half of the casualties. “The number of OD deaths involving fentanyl has more than doubled over the past five years,” the Pentagon disclosed.

“With hundreds of fatal overdoses reported on U.S. military bases in recent years,” Markey writes in a statement to Rolling Stone, “the toll is mounting. We can and must curb this tragic trend.”

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BC decriminalizes hard drugs amid fentanyl crisis

On Tuesday, following the granting of a three-year exemption from Health Canada, British Columbia became the first province in Canada to decriminalize hard drugs, with the government arguing that “substance use is a public health matter, not a criminal justice issue.”

Many have argued that it will only result in more drugs on the street and, inevitably, more dead British Columbians, while some have praised the move as a step in the right direction.

Under the new laws, adults found possessing less than 2.5 grams of certain formerly-illicit drugs will not face criminal charges, nor will they have the substances seized by law enforcement.

Drugs that can now be possessed and used without punishment include opioids, such as heroin, morphine, fentanyl, crack and powder cocaine, meth, and MDMA. 

The BC government emphasized that “decriminalization is not legalization,” noting that, “under this exemption, illegal drugs (including those listed above) are not legalized and will not be sold in stores. Drug trafficking remains illegal, regardless of the amount of drug(s) in possession.” They added that all prior restrictions relating to drug use at schools, airports, and private establishments will remain in place.

While the aforementioned drugs may not be sold in stores, in Vancouver, opioids were recently made available for purchase via vending machines. The project was meant to give users access to safe medical-grade opioids instead of potentially contaminated street drugs, however, it has come under scrutiny as of late due to the potential of misuse.

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‘Gas Station Heroin’ Is Causing Intense Withdrawals. It’s Legal in Most States.

A drug called tianeptine, known colloquially as “gas station heroin,” has been banned by several states. It’s being marketed as a dietary supplement, but some users are describing it as a highly addictive opioid. 

Tianeptine is a tricyclic antidepressant used to treat depression in some European, Latin American, and Asian countries, but it’s not approved by the FDA for medical use in the U.S. It’s not a controlled substance and is typically sold in the U.S. as a dietary supplement, nootropic (a chemical that improves cognitive function), or a research chemical under brand names like ZaZa Red, TD Red, and Tianna. It can be found in gas stations or easily bought online. 

Medical experts say tianeptine functions as an opioid because it hits opioid receptors in the brain, which explains why people have reported severe withdrawal when they try to stop using it. 

“People are using it either to manage or withdrawal from harder, harsher stuff, or they’re kind of starting their journey and developing an unhealthy relationship with it based on its effects—and its effects are opioid-like effects,” said Dr. Patrick Marshalek, an associate professor at West Virginia University’s School of Medicine. 

There’s very little known about tianeptine, including how many people are using it, though reports from both the FDA and the DEA have noted upticks in poison control calls about the drug up until at least 2020. It’s been banned in Michigan, Alabama, Minnesota, Tennessee, Georgia, and Indiana; officials in Mississippi issued a health alert about it earlier this year. 

Experts told VICE News the issues surrounding its use are part of a larger problem where unregulated substances mimic the effects of illicit drugs, despite being marketed in a benign way. 

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Don’t Let Police, Media Mislead You About Fentanyl Exposure Overdoses

Once again, media outlets are rushing to sow panic by blindly accepting a police department’s claims that an officer may have accidentally overdosed by being in close physical proximity to fentanyl, reinforcing the false message that you can potentially overdose on the drug even if you don’t intentionally consume it.

This time we head to Tavares, Florida, where the Tavares Police Department distributed to the local press body camera footage of Officer Courtney Bannick appearing to collapse and pass out after encountering what turned out to be fentanyl and meth in a rolled-up dollar bill she found in a routine traffic stop.

Local news outlets lapped it up (the story, not the fentanyl) and the video footage ran on WESH (the local NBC affiliate), FOX 35, and elsewhere. In none of the initial stories does anybody so much as question whether what they’re seeing is actually being caused by exposure to fentanyl. The officer was wearing gloves, but it was windy, and police argue that it’s possible she breathed the fentanyl in. Officers on the scene say they gave her three doses of Narcan. They brought her to the hospital, where she fully recovered. She is now fine.

The Tavares Police Department is very clear that it’s releasing the body camera footage for the purpose of scaring people about fentanyl.

“Officer Bannick really wants others to take away that this drug is dangerous,” Tavares Detective Courtney Sullivan told WESH. “It’s dangerous for not only yourself but others around you. Something as simple as the wind could expose you and just like that, your life could end.”

This just isn’t true. Add it to the pile of many, many examples of police attempting to convince the public that any possible exposure to fentanyl may be deadly. It does not simply pass through the skin when you touch it. As for the claim that the officer might have inhaled it, a study from the American College of Medical Toxicology and American Academy of Clinical Toxicology calculated that a person would have to stand next to a massive amount of fentanyl for two and a half hours to feel its effects.

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This Couple Died by Suicide After the DEA Shut Down Their Pain Doctor

It was a Tuesday in early November when federal agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration paid a visit to the office of Dr. David Bockoff, a chronic pain specialist in Beverly Hills. It wasn’t a Hollywood-style raid—there were no shots fired or flash-bang grenades deployed—but the agents left behind a slip of paper that, according to those close to the doctor’s patients, had consequences just as deadly as any shootout.

On Nov. 1, the DEA suspended Bockoff’s ability to prescribe controlled substances, including powerful opioids such as fentanyl. While illicit fentanyl smuggled across the border by Mexican cartels has fueled a record surge in overdoses in recent years, doctors still use the pharmaceutical version during surgeries and for soothing the most severe types of pain. But amid efforts to shut down so-called “pill mills” and other illegal operations, advocates for pain patients say the DEA has gone too far, overcorrecting to the point that people with legitimate needs are blocked from obtaining the medication they need to live without suffering. 

One of Bockoff’s patients who relied on fentanyl was Danny Elliott, a 61-year-old native of Warner Robins, Georgia. In March 1991, Elliott was nearly electrocuted to death when a water pump he was using to drain a flooded basement malfunctioned, sending high-voltage shocks through his body for nearly 15 minutes until his father intervened to save his life. Elliott was never the same after the accident, which left him with debilitating, migraine-like headaches. Once a class president and basketball star in high school, he found himself spending days on end in a darkened bedroom, unable to bear sunlight or the sound of the outdoors. 

“I have these sensations like my brain is loose inside my skull,” Elliott told me in 2019, when I first interviewed him for the VICE News podcast series Painkiller. “If I turn my head too quickly, left or right, it feels like my brain sloshes around. Literally my eyes burn deep into my skull. My eyes hurt so bad that it hurts to blink.”

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A Horrifying Drug Called ‘Tranq Dope’ Is Spreading in the US

After two years of sobriety, Allie Gramlich began using drugs again in April. This time around, Philadelphia’s street opioid supply was infiltrated with tranq or tranq dope, a mixture of fentanyl mixed and the animal tranquilizer xylazine. The high was non-existent, she said, replaced by hours of unconsciousness followed by intense withdrawal—and when she wanted to come off it only a couple months later, the detox was even worse. 

“It was honestly the most traumatizing experience I’ve ever had in my life.” 

When Gramlich, 28, had previously detoxed off heroin and fentanyl, she said she was sick for about a week. But with tranq, she said her dopesickness—which included constant vomiting, intense heart palpitations, chills, and a complete lack of energy—lasted 21 days. She was given drugs like methadone and clonidine, which is used to treat anxiety, to help ease the withdrawal, but she said “there was no comfort at all the entire time.” 

“These detox centers, these rehabs, they have no idea what they’re in for. They have no idea how to treat it. Some of them don’t even know what xylazine is.” 

Gramlich went to an inpatient treatment program run by Recovery Centers of America, which she described as “one of the nicer rehabs.” Still, she said, she wasn’t tested for xylazine, and no one she came across was familiar enough with xylazine to discuss it with her. She said she didn’t start feeling normal again until a week after she left rehab and went into a sober living house. 

“I would encourage anyone to go to detox, but like my heart would break for them knowing what they were for,” she said. “Some of these people have been using this shit for years and if it was that bad for me I cannot even imagine… how bad it would be.” 

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Tim Ryan Took Money From Opioid Distributor Whose Executives Mocked Addicts as ‘Pillbillies’

On the campaign trail, Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic Senate candidate in Ohio, likes to tell voters about his work as co-chair of the Congressional Addiction, Treatment, and Recovery Caucus and to attack pharmaceutical companies for profiting from “getting so many millions of Americans hooked on opiates.” None of that stopped him from accepting money from a political action committee funded by an opioid distributor whose executives mocked addicts as “pillbillies,” a Washington Free Beacon review of campaign finance documents found.

The $1,000 donation came from AmerisourceBergen PAC in November 2019. Emails revealed in 2021 during a lawsuit against the company for its alleged role in the opioid crisis showed AmerisourceBergen’s executives expressing broad contempt for poor whites suffering from addiction, which at the time was largely fueled by pharmaceuticals such as OxyContin.

In one exchange, a senior AmerisourceBergen executive circulated a parody song containing references to “hillbilly heroin,” “a bevy of Pillbillies” and a reference to Kentucky as “OxyContinville.” Another email shared between executives joked about how crackdowns against so-called pill mills—doctors who illegally prescribe opioids to customers—in Florida will lead to a “max [sic] exodus of Pillbillies heading north.” 

The donation could prove to be a political liability for Ryan, a Democrat running in a state that has been inordinately impacted by the opioid crisis. The Associated Press reported earlier this month that opioid distributors donated at least $27,000 to Ryan’s political campaigns since 2007.

At the same time, the AP found, Ryan voted against bills meant to increase funding for anti-opioid initiatives, such as spending packages for addiction treatment. In a statement to the AP, Ryan’s campaign said one of the donors, Cardinal, is a large employer in Ohio.

The Ryan campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

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Flesh-eating drug ‘tranq’ meant for animals now linked to thousands of heroin, fentanyl ODs

The flesh-eating animal tranquilizer xylazine has been linked to thousands of drug overdoses across the country as it inundates heroin and fentanyl supplies in places such as Philadelphia, Delaware and Michigan, reports say.

Known on the street as “tranq,” the sedative is now found in 91% of Philly’s heroin and fentanyl supplies, according to a report earlier this month in the peer-reviewed journal Science Direct.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that its prevalence is also soaring in President Biden’s home state of Delaware, it was reported last week.

In Michigan, deaths from the drug, which is often used on horses as a muscle relaxant and anesthetic, increased 86.8% between 2019 and 2020 before dropping off slightly in 2021, the Detroit Free Press reported Friday. In the past two years, it was detected in half the opioid deaths in the Ann Arbor region, accelerating fears of its westward proliferation, the paper said.

Xylazine also was involved in 19% of all drug overdose deaths in Maryland in 2021 and 10% of those in Connecticut the year before, according to federal officials.

Xylazine causes wounds and sores on users’ bodies, resulting in a significant increase of soft-tissue infections, bone disease and amputations in places such as Philadelphia, substance-abuse field epidemiologist Jen Shinefeld told Vice in March.

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Biden Admin Is Placing Vending Machines Filled With Drug Supplies in Rural Kentucky

The Biden administration is set to spend $3.6 million to deploy vending machines filled with drug supplies in rural Kentucky—an effort the Biden administration claims will reduce stigma for drug users.

The project from the National Institutes of Health was launched in August and will study the effectiveness of “harm reduction kiosks” in rural Appalachia that contain “injection equipment, naloxone, fentanyl test strips, hygiene kits, condoms, and other supplies.” The vending machines allow drug users to obtain items such as syringes without interacting with a health professional, in hopes of eliminating the “stigma” that comes with visiting an in-person harm reduction facility, according to the health agency.

The White House referenced the project in an August 31 press release on its actions taken “to address addiction and the overdose epidemic.” The administration has adopted a wide range of harm reduction policies, which aim to make illicit drug use safer rather than eliminate it.

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