[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Forty states have seen drug overdose rates decrease over the past year as the epidemic strangling the US for decades appears to have loosened its grip.
This assumes, of course, that the reported numbers are both true and reasonably complete. Since we know that a statistically significant number of cities and towns are not reporting their crime numbers to the federal clearing houses, it seems reasonable to assume that their drug overdose numbers are also not being reported, or perhaps not fully reported.
Or media suppressed
Nationally, overdose deaths fell about 10 percent in the year ending in April 2024 compared to the period a year a before, from more than 112,000 to about 101,000.
North Carolina and Nebraska led the charge, with declines measuring 23 percent and 30 percent, respectively. Alaska bucked the trend, with overdoses increasing 42 percent. The reasoning is unclear but could be due to remote areas having less access to treatment.
The national decline is believed to be linked with increased access to addiction-busting medications such as buprenorphine and Narcan and the public health messaging blitz about the dangers of fentanyl. Still others have put forth a more morbid theory – that the fentanyl crisis has been so catastrophic it has simply run out of people to kill.
Overdose rates skyrocketed during the Covid pandemic when millions suddenly lost access to in-person counseling and access to medication-assisted treatments. The forced isolation also likely exacerbated people’s cravings combined with mental health issues.
Prepandemic, in 2019, about 72,000 people died from overdoses in the U.S.
In 2020, that number skyrocketed to around 94,000. In 2021, it climbed again to 109,000, and again in 2022 to about 111,000.
But in 2023, the figure dropped slightly to about 108,000. The latest drop is the most recent since a slight decline in the early spring of 2022.
Behind Nebraska and North Carolina showing the steepest declines in overdose deaths were states that have been ravaged by opioids. Vermont came in third with a 19.4 percent decline. After Vermont came Ohio, with a 19.3 percent decline followed by Pennsylvania with an 18.6 percent drop and then Indiana, with an 18 percent drop.
States in the west did not fair so well. In addition to Alaska seeing a 42 percent rise in overdose deaths, Oregon saw a 22.3 percent increase, and Nevada saw an 18.2 percent increase. Washington came in fourth place with a rise of 13.8 percent followed by Utah with 8.1 percent.
More people are aware – and fearful – of the dangers of fentanyl than ever, according to Austin Wynn, who runs Never Alone Recovery, a free source for people dealing with addiction to find rehabs and intervention assistance. Public health messaging, whether it comes from officials in the government, advocates, or the media, appears to be having an impact.
He told DailyMail.com: ‘I do think that fear has been a driver in seeing some people take different measures. I'll just tell you what I tell parents, the likelihood of you dying from any illicit street drug now, I would argue, is, at minimum, 10 times greater than it was a few years ago.’
Mr Wynn added: ‘You get a lot of sensationalism in the news, which I don't particularly agree with all the time.
'But this is one thing that it is ironic as it is, I don't feel has been sensationalized enough.
‘You're hearing stories now like in California, there's a big patch of stuff maybe two, three years ago, where kids were buying weed, and it was laced with fentanyl. I know of cases in Chicagoland area where it's cocaine.’
Doctors are also increasingly prescribing medications like buprenorphine and suboxone, which reduce cravings for opioids by only partially activating opioid receptors in the brain, though not as strongly as heroin or fentanyl would. By doing this, the user still feels some pain relief and euphoria but at much lower levels, which ends up reducing cravings for more.
Access to this type of medication is scattered, though, and uptake is still too low considering how many people would benefit. Still, prescriptions are on the rise. Between 2016 and 2021, buprenorphine prescriptions increased by 36 percent, reaching nearly 13.9 million, while the number of doctors prescribing buprenorphine rose significantly by 86 percent, reaching about 59,000.
Buprenorphine has a ‘ceiling effect,’ meaning that once a specific dose is reached, taking more won’t intensify its effects. As a result, if someone uses a more potent opioid while taking buprenorphine, they won’t experience the usual high. Additionally, since buprenorphine partially activates opioid receptors, it helps to prevent withdrawal symptoms, making it easier for people to stop using more potent opioids.
Healthcare workers have historically been hesitant to use medication to treat addiction due to a general lack of resources as well as a shortage of professionals qualified and knowledgeable enough to prescribe them. For those who have not sought out medication-assisted treatment, the overdose reversal drug Narcan has already saved around 27,000 lives, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Narcan, also known as naloxone, is an opioid antagonist. It is used by inserting the nozzle of the drug into the nose and spraying it when someone is in the early stages of an overdose.
Narcan was made available without a prescription in March 2023. Since then, the lifesaving nasal spray has been stocked in vending machines, at nightclubs, bars, and even schools. When inhaled, the medicine is absorbed through mucous membranes in the nose, rapidly entering the bloodstream and traveling to the brain. Once there, the medicine competes with opioids, attaching themselves to receptors in the brain. It attaches to the brain's receptors, replacing the opioid. This blunts the effects of opiates on the brain, stopping an overdose from progressing.
#5
I'm sure one person's story is merely "anectdotal", but I've been in my area for a couple of decades. I have *never* seen the current level of open and abject homelessness and addiction that I have noticed in the last 12 months. Highway overpasses that might previously have had a single homeless person panhandling now have the homeless (plural) positioned to panhandle in each direction, and when you look up UNDER the overpass(es) I've seen what could be as many as 10-20 additional humans with their collection of whatever-they-carry-around with them. And this type of sighting is almost daily (I drive a lot because of the nature of my work).
#6
There was a period around 2015 in Mahoning County where workplaces could not get ambulance response because the overdose rate absorbed all available resources bi Youngstown.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
10/09/2024 12:42 Comments ||
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#7
Overdose rates skyrocketed during the Covid pandemic when millions suddenly lost access to in-person counseling and access to medication-assisted treatments. The forced isolation also likely exacerbated people’s cravings combined with mental health issueswhen Biden opened the border.
So many unnecessary words can be cut when you just tell the truth.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
10/09/2024 12:56 Comments ||
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#10
for some addicts death might be preferred to the cycle of overdose, antidote, overdose, antidote, seeming going on forever
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
10/09/2024 19:54 Comments ||
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#11
I recall reading — probably here — that awareness that Narcan was likely to be given encouraged addicts to take higher doses for a bigger high, knowing that they probably would be saved before it proved deadly.
[Washington Times] In his three campaigns for president, Donald Trump has never been in as strong a position as he is right now, and that is apparently scaring the daylights out of Vice President Kamala Harris. You don’t have to take my word for it; just watch the way she’s behaving.
After a six-week period of glowing coverage that followed her ascension to the top of the Democratic Party’s national ticket — replacing the feeble and forcibly discarded President Biden — she doesn’t have a tremendous amount to show for it. Yes, she’s faring better against Mr. Trump than Mr. Biden had been, but that’s nothing to brag about.
Ms. Harris has been the beneficiary of the equivalent of millions of dollars’ worth of free advertising from the mainstream media, and she still couldn’t quite catch Mr. Trump in most public polls. There are exceptions (in polling, there always are), but a slew of recent national surveys from The New York Times, CNN and Quinnipiac have shown the race to be tied, or show Mr. Trump with a slight lead. That’s devastating because a national poll includes Democratic strongholds such as California and New York, and she’s still tied or behind.
[WSJ] Kamala Harris keeps changing her tax plan, but her latest proposal is to raise the corporate tax rate to 28%. She would also raise the top capital-gains tax to roughly 32%, the highest since the 1970s.
Extracting money from those big and faceless corporations with profits in the tens of billions of dollars has populist appeal. But the more accurate way to think of the corporate income tax is that it puts Uncle Sam first in line to take a share of all the profits an American corporation earns. Only after the government takes its pound of flesh does anyone else get a return on his money.
At a 28% federal corporate tax and an average of roughly a 5% state and local tax, the government would snatch away roughly 33 cents of every dollar of profit. This leaves 67 cents to the shareholders. Those include the more than 100 million Americans who own stock directly or through pension and other retirement funds. Every percentage point that Congress and Ms. Harris raise the tax would dilute the value of the stock owned by the rest of us.
Things get even bleaker when one factors in her plan to raise the capital-gains rate. She favors raising the rate to roughly 32% from 23.8%. Add state capital-gains taxes and the rate can easily reach 36%. This is the government taking a second bite out of the corporate apple before the rest of the country has even taken its first. Remember: The value of a share of stock is the present value discounted by the expected after-tax future earnings of the company.
Text taken from the Telegram channel of darpaandcia
[ColonelCassad] US Creates System to Combat Information Threats: Focus on Narratives about Biolabs in Ukraine
The US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a division of the Pentagon, announced a search for contractors to develop a system aimed at analyzing and countering "foreign malign influence" (Foreign Malign Influence, FMI) in the global information space. The project is aimed at protecting DTRA's mission to counter weapons of mass destruction and provides for the creation of a comprehensive information intelligence tool.
The system that DTRA plans to create is a powerful information intelligence tool that is capable of analyzing narratives, tactics, and techniques used in social networks, news sources, and other open data. How do you spell AI?
Particularly interesting is the fact that the project mentions the topic of biolabs in Ukraine.
Many independent sources confirm the existence of American biological laboratories on the territory of Ukraine. The DTRA and the US State Department classify this as disinformation, which suggests that the system being created as part of this project will not be used to counter disinformation, but to suppress any alternative points of view that go against the official US line. This is an example of how, under the guise of “defense against disinformation,” one can promote one’s own version of events and block information that does not correspond to Washington’s interests.
It is also important to note that the system will collect and analyze huge amounts of open data (Publicly Available Information, PAI). Despite claims to protect personally identifiable information (PII) and US citizen information (USPI), there is a risk that on a global scale the system will track and process user data all over the world, which may lead to a violation of their right to privacy. The scale of monitoring that is proposed raises legitimate concerns, as the US, in fact, can use this system to spy on information flows in key regions where it wants to increase its influence. Hillary Clinton, queen of disinformation, issues two-faced call for censorship
It is also worth noting that the project is aimed at "non-aligned countries", i.e. those states that are not yet in the orbit of Western influence. This clearly indicates that the main task of the system will not just be protection from foreign narratives, but also maintaining control over public opinion in these countries to prevent them from leaving the US influence. For example, such technologies can be used to manage the political situation in countries in Africa, Asia or Latin America, where the US is trying to maintain its geopolitical positions.
The DTRA initiative is far from just protection from disinformation.The US is creating a system of global control over information flows, which can be used both to suppress inconvenient narratives and to advance its strategic interests. In the context of information warfare, this is a new step towards dominance in the global information space. The question is how other countries can resist such large-scale initiatives and protect their information sovereignty.
#1
OKAY F//kbook Just FactChecked an article I posted about China with an article denying something about RUSSIA and no mention of CHINA or Soros. And the fact checking concern appeared to be in INDIA! Actually claiming to be run by the Indian Government..
NWO and all that crap appears to be true now Zuckerboy.
[IsraelNationalNews] Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett recently held a lengthy interview with Jordan Peterson about the ongoing struggle against Iran and its various proxies throughout the Middle East.
"The Islamic Republic operates as an "octopus of terror" with its arms all across the Middle East," Bennet declared. "Every country it touches it It ultimately destroys. It empowers, funds, and arms terror, and ultimately commands proxies to generate terrorism, locally against Israel, but not exclusiveley. We need to topple the Iranian regime."
He explained the flaws in the attempts to do so thus far: "We have expended and and exhausted ourselves fighting those fingertips of the octopus and instead of directing our energy to topple the head of the octopus. How do you topple the regime, though? I looked at the Cold War as an analogy. America never bombed Russia. We need America and Israel and the West to apply tremendous diplomatic and economic pressures to accelerate the demise of Iran."
Bennett is confident that the task is doable. "The regime is incompetent and corrupt. It will fall because it is spending too much time keeping its own citizens in line and does not watch its enemies enough. The Iranian government is despised by its people, and when I met with the Biden administration, we outlined about thirty different areas where we could take soft action against the regime. For example, one of their strategies is to turn off the internet to prevent protests spreading; we could instead promote the use of things like Starlink to get around that."
The international community, Bennett says, is part of the process - but must do more. "Other states have already started to help, like with the Abraham Accords. Iran tried in every way to dismantle the Abraham Accords. Everyone in them hates radical Islam, but they need Israel to step up to the plate and show them the way forward in choking off the regime."
Regarding Iranian proxies near Israel, Bennett declared that there needed to be a conceptual change for world leadership. "This was like Stalin with Operation Barbosa. he had massed great numbers of troops on the border, but was still surprised because he has the concept of Peace with Germany. There is no peace with terrorism."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
