OxyContin News and Research

RSS

Study: Drug overdose deaths in the U.S. more than quadrupled from 1999 to 2020

The United States is experiencing its highest overall death rates in more than a century, fueled in part by drug overdose mortality. The origins of the current epidemic are due, at least in part, to a 1986 World Health Organization pronouncement that pain treatment is a universal right.

12 Sep 2023

Legal pot is more potent than ever — and still largely unregulated

Marijuana and other products containing THC, the plant's main psychoactive ingredient, have grown more potent and more dangerous as legalization has made them more widely available.

9 May 2023

The Biden administration vowed to be a leading voice on opioid settlements but has gone quiet

Early in President Joe Biden's tenure, his administration promised to play a key role in ensuring opioid settlement funds went toward tackling the nation's addiction crisis.

21 Apr 2023

Research provides a comprehensive structural framework to design safer pain-relieving drugs

In the continuing effort to improve upon opioid pain relievers, American and Chinese scientists used cryoEM technology to solve the detailed structures of the entire family of opioid receptors bound to their naturally occurring peptides.

18 Jan 2023

NY docs are now required to prescribe naloxone to some patients on opioid painkillers

Without opioid painkillers to dull the ache in his knees and other joints, Arnold Wilson wouldn't be able to walk half a block. The 63-year-old former New York City nurse has crippling arthritis for which he takes OxyContin twice a day and oxycodone when he needs additional relief.

5 Jan 2023

In rural America, deadly costs of opioids outweigh the dollars tagged to address them

Tim Buck knows by heart how many people died from drug overdoses in his North Carolina county last year: 10. The year before it was 12 — an all-time high.

12 Dec 2022

Sobering lessons in untying the knot of a homeless crisis

Michelle Farris never expected to become homeless, but here she was, sifting through garbage and towering piles of debris accumulated along a roadway on the outskirts of Northeast Portland.

21 Jun 2022

The Blackfeet nation’s plight underscores the fentanyl crisis on reservations

As the pandemic was setting in during summer 2020, Justin Lee Littledog called his mom to tell her he was moving from Texas back home to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana with his girlfriend, stepson, and son.

25 May 2022

The new MADD movement: Parents rise up against drug deaths

Life as he knew it ended for Matt Capelouto two days before Christmas in 2019, when he found his 20-year-old daughter, Alexandra, dead in her childhood bedroom in Temecula, California. Rage overtook grief when authorities ruled her death an accident.

23 May 2022

With overdose deaths surging, advocates on the ground push for over-the-counter naloxone

Louise Vincent figures her group, the North Carolina Survivors Union, saves at least 1,690 lives a year.

14 Dec 2021

Daily marijuana use reaches an all-time high in 2020 among U.S. college students

Daily marijuana use increased in 2020 to an all-time high among U.S. college students over the past four decades, according to the University of Michigan’s annual national Monitoring the Future panel study.

8 Sep 2021

As holdout Missouri joins nation in monitoring opioid prescriptions, experts worry

Kathi Arbini said she felt elated when Missouri finally caught up to the other 49 states and approved a statewide prescription drug monitoring program this June in an attempt to curb opioid addiction.

26 Jul 2021

Researchers describe a simple, inexpensive way to measure drug dissolution

When you take a time-release drug, you count on it doing what the package says: release the drug slowly into your bloodstream to provide benefits over the specified period of time.

25 Nov 2020

Health on wheels: Tricked-out RVs deliver addiction treatment to rural communities

Tonja Jimenez is far from the only person driving an RV down Colorado's rural highways. But unlike the other rigs, her 34-foot-long motor home is equipped as an addiction treatment clinic on wheels, bringing lifesaving treatment to the northeastern corner of the state, where patients with substance use disorders are often left to fend for themselves.

28 Sep 2020

College students with physical and cognitive disabilities have greater risk for substance abuse

College students with physical and cognitive disabilities use illicit drugs more, and have a higher prevalence of drug use disorder, than their non-disabled peers, according to a Rutgers study.

21 Sep 2020

Scientists discover possible biomarkers for detecting opioid use disorder during pregnancy

Scientists at the University of Missouri have discovered possible biological markers that they hope could one day help identify the presence of an opioid use disorder during human pregnancy.

26 Aug 2020

Researchers find a key brain region for controlling binge drinking

A team of National Institutes of Health-funded researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina has found that deactivating a stress-signaling system in a brain area known for motivation and emotion-related behaviors decreases binge drinking.

17 Apr 2020

California’s new attack on opioid addiction hits old roadblocks

Jennifer Stilwell, a 30-year-old mother of two young children, kicked heroin cold turkey five years ago, but she got hooked again last fall.

1 Apr 2020

Most youths do not get timely addiction treatment after opioid overdose

A study of more than 4 million Medicaid claims records during a recent seven-year period concludes that less than a third of the nearly 3,800 U.S. adolescents and young adults who experienced a nonfatal opioid overdose got timely (within 30 days) follow-up addiction treatment to curb or prevent future misuse and reduce the risk of a second overdose.

17 Jan 2020

FDA’s risk-management program to curb improper opioid prescribing may not have been effective

A risk-management program set up in 2012 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to curb improper prescribing of extended-release and long-acting opioids may not have been effective because of shortcomings in the program's design and execution, according to a paper from researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

7 Jan 2020