Click here to listen on Spotify There’s no question that over-prescribing of opioids kick-started the opioid crisis – the data is so overwhelming that nearly two dozen major companies have settled lawsuits to the tune of tens of billions of dollars because of that evidence. We’ve since dramatically cut the
The Tennessee Opioid Abatement Council (OAC) has announced the next round of statewide community grants. The due date for applications is Dec. 13, 2024 at 10 p.m. central time. The application portal will open at 12 a.m. central time on November 12 and close at 10 p.m. central time on
SMART’s Program Coordinator, Jeremy Kourvelas, presented to the Tennessee Public Health Association (TPHA) on best practices relating to using local data to inform decisions, covering: common challenges with data collection and quality data-influenced policymaking frameworks data and the overdose crisis practical recommendations with examples from abating the overdose epidemic. This
On May 21, the New York Times published an article titled “Has Fentanyl Peaked?” The premise is that the “opioid crisis…may finally be turning around” based on the fact that preliminary data from the CDC shows that drug overdose deaths slightly declined in 2023, now down to 107,543 estimated deaths
Click here to listen on Spotify As the drug overdose deaths continue to climb, we have heard more and more Sheriffs and law enforcement officers across the state say “we can’t arrest ourselves out of this problem.” That the criminal justice system plays an important role, but not the only
Click here to listen on Spotify When the CDC reports that almost 4,000 Tennesseans died of a drug overdose in 2023, it can be easy to forget that each one of those numbers represents a human being that was found deceased, investigated by law enforcement, and analyzed by a medical
If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you know that there is strong evidence for the effectiveness of addiction treatment, and that the biggest obstacle we face in combating the overdose crisis is an overall lack of access to that treatment. Health insurance is of course a
Starting with the multiple guilty pleas from Purdue Pharma in 2020, thousands of lawsuits across the country have lead to a series of settlements from numerous pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors for their role in the opioid crisis. From just the first and second wave of settlements with Cardinal Health, Janssen,
Purdue Pharma. Johnson and Johnson. CVS. Walgreens. I could keep going. Drug manufacturers and distributors have rightly come under scrutiny in light of the opioid abatement settlements. As these companies start paying hundreds of millions of dollars out across the country, in an effort to try to make up for
We are now in the fourth wave of the overdose crisis. Fentanyl is the still the most common drug involved in these deaths, but stimulants, primarily methamphetamine, is increasingly prevalent. In fact, the vast majority of all overdose deaths now involve multiple drugs. Meth, cocaine, heroin; worse still, newer contaminants
