Via David Juurlink, Internal medicine, clinical pharmacology/toxicology, and drug safety research @UofTmedicine.
Health
Drug War, Health, Law, Opioids
Treatment Should Always Be a First, Readily-Available Option
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
At the Asbury Park Press, Shannon Mullen, Lisa Robyn Kruse, Austin Bogues, and Andrew J. Goudsward report on the unfair disparity in the treatment of Crack v. Heroin use: Dannis Billups’ addiction nightmare began with an actual nightmare when he was about 4 years old. His daddy sat him on his knee and gave him a half-can…
Health
The Hidden Crisis in Rural America
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
It’s prohibitively difficult to access mental-health services in rural America. That’s because, relative to urban areas, rural counties have so few mental-health professionals. The majority of nonmetropolitan counties in the U.S. don’t have a psychiatrist, and almost half lack a psychologist. The paucity has resulted in a public-health crisis—rural Americans suffering from a psychiatric condition…
America, City, Economy, Health, Local Government, Opioids
Opioid Crisis : Great Recession :: Dust Bowl : Great Depression
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
It’s a loose analogy (yet a useful one) to say that the opioid crisis is to the Great Recession as the Dust Bowl was to the Great Depression. These deep economic downturns did not cause, respectively, either the Dust Bowl or the opioid crisis, but each downturn did exacerbate the severity of its coincident calamity.…
Economy, Health
Society of Actuaries: Economic Cost of the Opioid Crisis
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In Whitewater, in the Midwest, and opioid addiction has been personally devastating and economically debilitating. In a recent study, the Society of Actuaries estimates the Economic Impact of Non-Medical Opioid Use in the United States: The estimated costs consist of the following: • Nearly one-third ($205 billion) of the estimated economic burden of the opioid…
Education, Health, School District
School Board, 8.26.19: Health
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
School Board Meeting 08/26/19 from Whitewater Community TV on Vimeo. Whitewater’s school board met in regular session on Monday night, with an agenda of 17 items. Item 8D was a mental health presentation from Dr. Lanora Heim, the district’s director of pupil services. The presentation appears from 1:01:00 to 1:19:36 on the video above, and…
Babbittry, Boosterism, Economy, Health, Wisconsin
The Rural Condition: Life expectancy for Wisconsin babies falls
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
Boosters’ ceaseless distortions to ‘accentuate the positive’ – so common across the state and in Whitewater before, during, and after the Great Recession – meet their tragic refutation in life expectancy declines for Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Public Policy Forum reports on Troubling trends in Wisconsin: Life expectancy down; alcohol, drug and suicide deaths up: The…
City, Culture, Economy, Education, Health, Poverty, School District
School Board, 7.22.19: One Worthy Question
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Whitewater’s school board met in regular session on Monday night, with an agenda of 16 items, of varying importance. In a two-hour, open-session discussion of over a dozen items, with topics great and small (and at least one board member as interested in wheedling or badgering himself into future meetings as any deeper question), there…
Health, Walworth County, Wisconsin
The Washington Post’s Pain Pill Database
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
The Washington Post, as part of its Opioid Files series, has published Drilling into the DEA’s pain pill database: For the first time, a database maintained by the Drug Enforcement Administration that tracks the path of every single pain pill sold in the United States — by manufacturers and distributors to pharmacies in every town…
Cruelty, Health, Hunger, Immigration, Migrants, Misconduct
‘Hungry, Scared and Sick’
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Simon Romero, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Manny Fernandez, Daniel Borunda, Aaron Montes and Caitlin Dickerson report Hungry, Scared and Sick: Inside the Migrant Detention Center in Clint, Tex. (‘An out-of-the-way border station in the desert outside of El Paso has become the epicenter of outrage over the Trump administration’s policies on the southwest border‘): CLINT, Tex. —…
Bad Ideas, Environment, Foxconn, Health, Scott Walker, Trump
‘Trump Appointees Shunted Scientists on Pollution at Foxconn Site’
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Courts, Crime, Drug War, Health, Law, Walworth County
Treatment Courts as Practical Success Stories
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Treatment courts, whether for drunk driving or drug abuse, have been successful in jurisdictions across the country. Counties from coast to coast – red or blue – have seen positive outcomes from judicially-overseen treatment programs. Despite this, there’s been opposition to a drug treatment court in rural Walworth County, sadly beset by addictions of various…
Health, Trump, Unfit
Trump’s Apparent Cognitive Deficits
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
The fundamental – and dispositive – objections to Trump are political, legal, ethical, and moral. Collectively, those objections are overwhelming. There are, however, practical concerns, also: he’s apparently, evidently deficient, as psychologist John Gartner writes: In Alzheimer’s, as language skills deteriorate, we see two types of tell-tale speech disorders, or paraphasias: Semantic paraphasia involves choosing the…
Health, Social Media, Weird Tales
Dangers Imagined and Real
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Taylor Lorenz writes of unjustified worries about the ‘Momo Challenge’ in Momo Is Not Trying to Kill Children (‘Like eating Tide Pods and snorting condoms, the Momo challenge is a viral hoax’). Lorenz has made a career of observing and reporting on social media trends, and reassures that On Tuesday afternoon, a Twitter user going…