Gambling — A Public Health Issue?
...because gambling is now an industry with vast resources and a huge political presence, we can expect... significant resistance from those quarters.
Category: Thinking About Addiction
Epidemiology, mortality, prevention, public investment and costs vs. benefits. When it comes to public health, addiction ticks all the boxes.
Thinking About Addiction
Latest
An MD takes on the DEA
Still, “pill mills” do continue to exist, if not in the numbers they once did. I suppose they could stage a comeback — the economics still work.
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Another Country Tries Prohibition
…efforts to provide treatment for the many victims of rampant alcoholism have been relatively rare, largely volunteer efforts funded by donations rather than much in the way of government support.
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More Bad Medicine
Seriously, how dumb, or perhaps desperate, would a medical professional have to be to undertake something like this?
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Legal Cannabis: Success or Not?
…it’s an omen of bad times to come. Why? Because people in New Mexico’s cities are not buying enough pot.
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The Bill Comes Due
ALD (alcohol-related liver disease) in the United States is projected to cost $355 billion in direct healthcare-related costs and $525 billion in lost labor and economic consumption.
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The Power of Drug Company Marketing
…a number of years ago, the Institute of Medicine set forth guidelines intended to reduce the influence of advertising on how physicians prescribed medications… to date, relatively few physicians have actually adopted those guidelines.
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Bongs for Sale, Cheap
…the goal, as one official described it, is to “discourage unlicensed cannabis activities and to help level the playing field for legitimate businesses paying their taxes.”
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The Oregon Trials
Measure 110 was a classic example of a syndrome that’s plagued innovative social programs since the 1960’s and 70’s.
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Presidential Pill Mill?
I know something about how healthcare professionals are trained to manage medications, and this isn’t it.
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Odds & Ends
…they may have purchased what they believe to be cocaine, or methamphetamine, or heroin, any or all of which may have been ‘cut’ with fentanyl or another uber-potent synthetic opioid, in sufficient quantity to overcome their tolerance and put them in imminent danger of death.
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Back in Court — Pill Mill edition
A lone physician was found to have prescribed more than 500,000 doses of prescription opioids to assorted patients in little more than two years of medical practice.
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Fatal for These Fans
In the absence of much factual information, wild theories have proliferated.
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