The rate of drug overdose deaths involving cocaine was stable between 2009 and 2013, then nearly tripled from 1.6 per 100,000 in 2013 to 4.5 in 2018.
NCHS Data Brief No. 384, October 2020 — https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db384.htm
Memo to all of my friends in the mortality risk business:
With so much attention being paid to Covid-19 it’s easy to forget people die from other causes. Don’t forget this.
Since 2011, emergency room visits related to meth in San Francisco have jumped 600% to 1,965 visits in 2016, the last year for which ER data is available. Admissions to the hospital are up 400% to 193, according to city public health data. And at San Francisco General Hospital, of 7,000 annual psychiatric emergency visits last year, 47% were people who were not necessarily mentally ill — they were high on meth.
Read the full article here.
A study of more than 1,200 luxury real estate purchases in B.C.’s Lower Mainland in 2016 found that more than 10 per cent were tied to buyers with criminal records. Continue reading →
People buying drugs like Xanax online are taking the pills, not realizing that they are fake and some are tainted with a potent opioid. The mistake can be fatal. 26 more words
For more charts go to the source article.
Read the ZeroHedge article here.
Mexico posted its highest homicides on record, with a new government report Sunday showing murders in the country rose by 16 percent in the first half of 2018.
The Interior Department said there were 15,973 homicides in the first half of the year, compared to 13,751 killings in the same period of 2017.
According to the AP, the record-breaking homicides have surpassed the violence seen during the dark years of Mexico’s drug war in 2011, along with exceeding all government data since records began in 1997.
Kids have shifted from a dairy product rich in calcium and vitamin D to beverages laden with sugar and caffeine, which is likely contributing to the nation’s obesity problem, said Barry Popkin, a University of North Carolina researcher who studies how diets change.
“This is not a healthy trend for our long-term health,” he said.
Read the AP source article here.
Good article from The Dose Makes the Poison blog. You can read the entire article here.
I found the following excerpt fascinating. The bold lines are my highlights.
From a general forensic toxicology standpoint, the real takeaway is that this is a dangerous combination of substances to use concurrently. He was consuming two powerful opioid and two potent benzodiazepines which when used together can create synergistic effects and exaggerated central nervous system depression. Add that situation to an already compromised cardiovascular and respiratory system, and it’s a recipe for disaster. For my own information, I would love to see the full toxicology report with quantitative measures of drug, etc. How much fentanyl was present? How much temazepam and alprazolam were detected? Not that any of that really matters though.
With the detection of acetylfentanyl and despropionylfentanyl, it seems as if Tom Petty was supplementing his pharmaceutical medications with illicitly manufactured substances. Acetylfentanyl is not a pharmaceutical medication anywhere in the world and is only found as a designer opioid/analog meant to skirt the controlled substances act in the USA. Fentanyl does not metabolize to acetylfentanyl. As despropionylfentanyl is a precursor/intermediate used in the illicit (non-pharmaceutical) synthesis of fentanyl, it generally used as a marker for exposure to illicitly manufactured fentanyl. The presence of this substance has also been associated with the use of various fentanyl analogs including acetylfentanyl, acrylfentanyl, and furanylfentanyl. No one knows if the use of illicit opioid was intentional or not. Remember the situation surrounding Prince’s death. Multiple pills were found in his residence that looked like pharmaceutical hydrocodone/acetaminophen but turned out to be counterfeit tablets containing fentanyl and the opioid research chemical U-47700.
As a conclusion, I’ll say, please do not mix depressant drugs. Do not mix opioids with benzodiazepines. Do not mix either of them with ethanol. Stay safe, folks.
Pay attention to those medications.
Didn’t I mention this previously when writing about Heath Ledger’s death?
Mexico is on track to have the deadliest year ever since modern records began. In the first 10-months of 2017, there were more than 20,878 murders nationwide, as many in the war-torn country have blamed President Enrique Pena Nieto’s failure to tackle drug violence.
Read the source article here.
Deaths from synthetic opioids spiked 72% in one year
Source: Opioid Deaths Up, Illicit Fentanyl to Blame | Medpage Today
Thank you China. Thank you Mexico.
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