It seems well established that Volodymyr Zhukovskyy drove the truck that killed seven motorcyclists in the White Mountains last weekend, but what is less clear why he still had a license to drive it. The deadly crash has opened up a rift between state transportation officials in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and also spurred a review […]
Drugs
Posted inDrug Addiction
Juul says it’s only here to help
E-CIGARETTE USE HAS EXPLODED, and whether this is a good thing or not depends very much on the vantage point from which it’s viewed. Both vantage points were on display this morning on the Boston Globe homepage. A huge ad for Juul appeared, promoting efforts the e-cigarette maker says it’s taking to address “youth usage […]
Posted inOpinion
Hail to the Harm Reduction Commission
THE GOVERNOR’S HARM REDUCTION COMMISSION’S endorsement of supervised drug consumption sites is a game-changing step towards effective drug policy, especially concerning problematic drug use. Government commissions often serve as convenient burial grounds for controversial approaches such as supervised drug consumption sites, where people who use drugs can do so in relative safety. And with representatives […]
Posted inDrug Addiction
Was ‘Reefer Madness’ right?
IN THE MID-1930s, a church group financed a film intended to frighten parents about the dangers their children face from marijuana. “Reefer Madness” portrayed cannabis as a powerful drug capable of sending users into psychotic, violent rages. The movie has become something of a cult classic in recent decades, mocked as a laughable example of anti-drug […]
Posted inDrug Addiction
Commission torn over supervised injection sites
MEMBERS OF A STATE COMMISSION see some theoretical benefits from establishing supervised drug injection sites, but when it comes to the feasibility of actually establishing such programs, consensus was harder to find. Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders, who chairs the Harm Reduction Commission, was the most vocal skeptic at a meeting Thursday, but […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
SJC weighs appropriate penalty for supplying heroin
HEROIN KILLED ERIC SINACORI, a 20-year-old University of Massachusetts Amherst student, who was found dead by his parents when they visited from New Jersey in October 2013. A medical examiner concluded the cause of death was “acute heroin intoxication.” Jesse Carrillo, a graduate student at the school who had fallen into his own heroin addiction, […]
Posted inDrug Addiction
Pharma faces different type of drug trial
WHITE-COLLAR CRIME may be conducted in executive suites or empty speaking halls, but its victims can all too quickly wind up in the same place as those killed by a knife or gun. That’s one of the takeaways from a slew of ongoing cases against pharmaceutical companies accused of using sleazy or aggressive tactics to […]
Posted inOpinion
Four reasons medication-assisted treatment may not help inmates
IN DECEMBER, a federal district court judge in Massachusetts ordered the Essex County jail to provide an entering inmate methadone so that he could continue his successful methadone treatment of the last two years. The individual had failed on the other opioid medications, buprenorphine and naltrexone. He had overdosed and been revived with naloxone multiple […]
Posted inDrug Addiction
Spoon Movement comes to Beacon Hill
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE PASSERBY GAWKED as the men pulled a ramp down from the back of a U-Haul truck parked on a Beacon Street curb Friday morning and began to unload a large, strangely shaped object onto the sidewalk. Not until the men wheeled the silver sculpture, bent in some places and stained brown […]
Posted inOpinion
E-scripts for opioids save lives
GOV. CHARLIE BAKER recently signed into law a bill to mitigate the state-level effects of the ongoing opioid crisis. Like other such legislative efforts at both the federal and state levels, this important legislation requires healthcare providers and pharmacies to switch to electronic prescribing of controlled substances. This most recent legislative success reflects just how […]