The researchers found the mutations in more than 40 percent of autopsy brain samples taken from white people who had died of a cocaine overdose. Of white people who didn’t use drugs, only 19 percent had the mutation. One in five samples from the drug-free group had the variant, compared with one in two to three samples from the cocaine-using white individuals and one in eight African Americans. (The gene variant is less prevalent in African Americans.)

The study found that the mutations affect the way in which the brain reacts to the neurotransmitter dopamine (which is released in the brain after certain activities, including using cocaine). Previous studies have shown that cocaine blocks dopamine transmitters from absorbing dopamine after it is released in the brain, which leads to a feeling of euphoria that the brain eventually associates with cocaine and causes drug cravings.

This is the first study to find a strong connection in brain tissue between the mutations and severe cocaine abuse. However, many questions remain, such as whether the mutations increase the risk of someone trying cocaine in the first place, or whether they strengthen the brain’s drug craving, which leads to severe abuse.

Wolfgang Sadee, senior author of the study and a professor of pharmacology and director of the Program in Pharmacogenomics at Ohio State University, said that their study shows that the gene mutations may impact cocaine abuse, and could help researchers discover new therapies for a range of psychiatric disorders that involve dopamine.

No test currently exists to see whether people are carrying the mutations. Sadee and colleagues are currently examining how these mutations could affect the response of carriers to drugs that act on the gene.

Source: Science Daily, Genetic Trait Could Triple Odds of Whites’ Susceptibility to Heavy Cocaine Abuse, September 22, 2010

Genetic Variant Increases Risk of Severe Cocaine Abuse in Whites is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

Nancy Dillon and Stephanie Gaskell of the New York Daily News report that Los Angeles County Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter told RadarOnline.com that when emergency personnel arrived, the 38-year-old actor was alive but weak and complaining of flu-like symptoms. Haim’s mother, Judy, called 911 at 12:53 a.m. after he was found unresponsive. Haim was rushed to Providence St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Burbank, where he was pronounced dead at 2:15 a.m.

Law enforcement sources said four prescription bottles were found nearby, according to TMZ.com, but said his death appeared to be accidental.

Haim’s mother told RadarOnline.com that the actor moved in with her to help care for her while she undergoes chemotherapy for breast cancer. "I am a cancer victim and Corey was helping me at home," she said. "He was a good boy. I’m devastated by his death."

The Canadian-born actor starred in the 1987 vampire flick "The Lost Boys," but was probably best known for his rocky relationship with co-star Corey Feldman. Feldman has not commented on the loss of his longtime friend.

The Los Angeles coroner’s office said an autopsy would be performed to determine the cause of death. "There were no signs of trauma," a spokesman at the coroner’s office told the Daily News.

Haim, who has been in and out of rehab, also starred in "The Two Coreys," a reality show with Feldman that aired in 2007 and 2008. The show was cancelled during its second season. Feldman reportedly refused to continue working with Haim until he sought help for his drug addiction.

Haim, in a 2007 interview with Britain’s The Sun newspaper, talked about his struggle with drugs, specifically prescription pain killers.

"I started on the downers which were a hell of a lot better than the uppers because I was a nervous wreck. But one led to two, two led to four, four led to eight, until at the end it was about 85 a day – the doctors could not believe I was taking that much," he said.

"And that was just the Valium – I’m not talking about the other pills I went through."
Haim, who filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1997, also admitted to abusing cocaine and crack.

In 2007 told ABC’s "Nightline" that drugs had ruined his career. "I feel like with myself I ruined myself to the point where I wasn’t functional enough to work for anybody, even myself," he said. "I wasn’t working."

Haim’s official website was last updated on Jan. 18 and promotes his upcoming film, a thriller titled "American Sunset."

A woman who worked at a convenience store located inside the apartment complex said Haim came in on Tuesday to buy food and cigarettes and "appeared to be upbeat and in good spirits," according to RadarOnline.com.

Born in Toronto, Haim began acting at the age of 10. He got his big break in 1986 with the film "Lucas" and then with "The Lost Boys," co-starring Feldman and Kiefer Sutherland. He later starred alongside Heather Graham in the cult classic "License to Drive."
 

Corey Haim Dies of Apparent Prescription Drug Overdose is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

Science Daily reports that the study, published in the European Heart Journal on January 13, carefully investigated all the circumstances surrounding a consecutive series of sudden deaths between 2003 and 2006. During post-mortems the pathologists tested blood and urine for traces of toxic substances and studied the organs, focusing on the cardiovascular system and toxicological analysis; they also gathered information on substance abuse prior to death, the circumstances of the death and death scene investigations.

Out of 668 sudden deaths during the study period, 21 (3.1%) were related to cocaine use; of these, all occurred in men aged between 21 and 45, and most of the cocaine-related deaths were due to problems with the heart and its related systems.

Dr. Joaquín Lucena, MD PhD, Head of the Forensic Pathology Service at the Institute of Legal Medicine (Seville, Spain) who led the study, said: “Our findings show that cocaine use causes adverse changes to the heart and arteries that then lead to sudden death.”

He and his colleagues found that median levels of cocaine in blood or urine were 0.1 and 1.15 mg/L respectively, with a range that varied widely but which depended on a number of factors related to the drug itself (how it was taken, how people’s bodies processed it and what other substances were taken at the same time), and to the people themselves (body mass index, acute or chronic use of the drug, other underlying health issues, age and sex).

They wrote: “Any amount of the drug can be considered to have the potential for toxicity due to the fact that some patients have poor outcomes with relatively low blood concentrations, whereas others tolerate large quantities without consequences.”

The researchers also found that 81% of the men who died after cocaine use also smoked, and 76% had drunk alcohol. Ethanol, the intoxicating ingredient in alcoholic drinks, enhances the “high” obtained from cocaine while minimizing the subsequent “low.”

However, both smoking and alcohol are associated with heart disease. “The combination of cocaine with either or both of these habits can be considered as a lethal cocktail that promotes the development of premature heart disease,” said Dr. Lucena.

The study is the first to investigate the prevalence of cocaine-related sudden deaths in such a detailed and methodical way. The authors highlight the importance of this method of studying sudden deaths.
“For the correct diagnosis of the sudden death, especially in young adults, it is important to use a uniform autopsy protocol, including a toxicology investigation of the blood and urine for illicit drugs,” said Dr. Lucena. “Cocaine abuse is a growing public health issue in Europe and we can only monitor its prevalence by performing these detailed autopsies whenever someone dies suddenly.”

In their study, the authors wrote: “The estimated number of COC [cocaine] consumers is about 12 million Europeans with an overall prevalence of 3.7% of the total adult population (15-64 years). Ever in lifetime experience of COC is reported by more than 5% of the total adult European population in three countries: UK (7.7%), Spain (7.0%) and Italy (6.6%). The prevalence of use of COC is higher among young adults (15-34 years), with around 7.5 million young Europeans (5.4% on average) estimated as having used it at least once in their lifetime. In the year 2007, an estimated 3.5 million (2.4%) European young adults have used COC, with the highest prevalence levels, of over 3%, being found in Spain, Italy and the UK.”

“As the estimated number of European young adults cocaine consumers is similar in Spain, UK and Italy, there is no reason to consider that the cocaine-related sudden death in UK and Italy would be different to what we have found in our research in south-west Spain,” said Dr. Lucena.

To put the rates of sudden deaths in context, he added: “According to our experience in the Forensic Pathology Service at the Institute of Legal Medicine, the rate of cocaine-related deaths per year in Seville, is roughly half the number of people who die suddenly from hemorrhagic stroke.”

Professor David Hillis and Professor Richard Lange, chairman and executive vice chairman, respectively, of the Department of Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center (San Antonio, USA), who were unconnected with the work, wrote an editorial to accompany Dr. Lucena’s paper. They reported that the prevalence of cocaine use varied in Europe from 0.7% in Romania and Lithuania to 12.7% in the UK, but this was likely to be an under-estimate.

They agreed that uniform protocols were required for post-mortems on victims of sudden death, including toxicological examination of the blood and urine for illicit drugs. “Until these are accomplished, the prevalence of cocaine and other illicit drug use will be underestimated, and cocaine-related complications will not be recognized,” they wrote.

“Physicians should consider the possibility of cocaine abuse in a young individual with cardiovascular disease or sudden death, especially in those without traditional risk factors for atherosclerosis. Finally, the notion that recreational cocaine use is ‘safe’ should be dispelled, since even small amounts may have catastrophic consequences, including sudden death.”

Study Examines Sudden Deaths Related to Cocaine Use is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

Among the most commonly prescribed medications in Canada, opioids are often used for patients with chronic non-malignant pain. This study suggests that the increases in opioids prescriptions are a significant factor in accidental opioid-related deaths.

To complete this study, researchers examined data from 1991 to 2007 from IMS Health Canada and deaths attributed to opioids use from records of the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario between 1991 and 2004.

Opioid pain medication prescriptions increased by 29 percent, with codeine being the most frequently prescribed. Interestingly, the number of prescriptions for that drug declined during the study period. There was also a 850 percent increase in ocycodone prescriptions, which accounted for 32 percent of the almost 7.2 million prescriptions for opioids dispensed in 2006.

In the years between 1991 and 2004, 7,099 deaths with complete records were attributed to alcohol and/or drugs. In 3,406 of these deaths, or 61.9 percent, opioids were implicated as the cause of death.

"The rise in opioid-related deaths was due in large part to inadvertent toxicity," wrote Dr. Irfan Dhalla, of the University of Toronto and coauthors. "There was no significant increase in the number of deaths from suicide involving opioids over the study period."

Once the coroner’s data was linked to health care databases, the researchers included 3,066 deaths. As many as 66.4 percent of these patients have seen a physician at least one in the four weeks preceding their death and received a diagnosis of mental health problems and pain-related complaints were among the most common reasons for medical attention.

"The societal burden of opioid-related mortality and morbidity in Canada is substantial," write the authors. "In our study, the annual incidence of opioid-related deaths in 2004 (27.2 million) falls between the incidence of death from HIV infection (12 per million) and sepsis (40 per million)."
 

Opioid-Related Deaths Continue to Rise in Canada is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

Goldstein and fellow musician Travis Barker were the sole survivors of the Learjet crash in South Carolina in September 2008, but they both spent months receiving treatment for burns, trauma, and emotional distress.

Now Goldstein’s estate is suing the company that chartered the plane for wrongful death, claiming that Goldstein, a former drug addict, was forced to take various pain medications as a result of the accident, which left two pilots and two friends dead.

The family lawyers are also going after Learjet and the estates of the two dead pilots, according to TMZ.com.

Family Says Plane Crash Caused DJ AM’s Death is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

Linda Deutsch of the Associated Press reports that Dr. Nathalie Maullin was to continue her testimony Tuesday as prosecutors sought to show that the celebrity model was addicted to painkillers supplied by defendants in a drug case.

Maullin took the stand Monday after a disruption in the testimony of star witness Larry Birkhead resulted in a member of the prosecution team disappearing from the courtroom.

District attorney’s spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said the future role of Deputy District Attorney Sarah Slice was under discussion after Birkhead, the father of Smith’s daughter, testified that she tried to influence his testimony. He said the young prosecutor suggested he was “taking the side” of Smith’s former boyfriend, lawyer Howard K. Stern.

Birkhead said Slice also warned him his daughter might have future problems because of her mother’s drug use.

“I felt I personally did my best and I was being chastised,” Birkhead said under questioning by defense attorney Ellyn Garofalo.

Birkhead said Slice told him prosecutors were “frustrated” with his testimony in the preliminary hearing, which will decide whether Stern and two doctors stand trial. They are charged with conspiracy to illegally give controlled substances to Smith, who died of an accidental overdose in 2007.

When court resumed after lunch, Slice was absent. An after-hours call to her office was not answered. District attorney Renee Rose kept Birkhead on the stand talking about Smith’s drug use.

Birkhead said he thought Smith took too many medications but that she told him: “I’m not a drug addict.”

Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry asked if he ever had a conversation with Stern in which he used the word “addiction.” Birkhead answered, “No.”

Rose continued to press Birkhead on multiple issues, including the fact that he made $2 million from TV interviews after Smith’s death, until the judge told her he had heard enough.

In her testimony Monday, Maullin described her contact with Smith when she checked into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in April 2006, pregnant and in apparent withdrawal from pain and anti-anxiety medications. She said Smith had decided to “go cold turkey” and stop all drugs when she became pregnant, resulting in withdrawal.

She said Smith came to the hospital in distress, sweating, having spasms in her arms and legs, and with her eyes dilated.

Maullin said she contacted Smith’s physician, Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, one of those now charged in the case, and learned he had prescribed seven different drugs to Smith during the time she was seeking relief from pain.

Maullin said she suggested a new regimen including hypnosis and acupuncture but Smith wasn’t interested.

“She wouldn’t engage. She didn’t make eye contact. She was very hostile,” Maullin recalled. “It was, ‘Give me my medication and leave me alone.’”

Maullin said that when Smith was asked questions, she would reply: “Ask Howard.”

She said she told Stern that Smith should be in a structured rehab program and discussed with him and Kapoor her belief that Smith was addicted. Maullin said that during Smith’s hospital stay, she tried to regulate the former model’s use of methadone for pain and remove her from a number of drugs known as benzodiazepines.

Rose suggested that after Smith’s release, Kapoor continued to prescribe one of those medications.

Kapoor’s attorney, Ellyn Garofalo, has said the doctor gave Smith “sound and appropriate” treatment. Attorney Steve Sadow, representing Stern, has said his client shouldn’t be blamed for Smith’s death because he was relying on the doctors to treat her.

Anna Nicole Smith’s Drug Addiction Detailed is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

Peter Hermann of the Baltimore Sun writes that John and McCracken were postdoctoral fellows at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, working in labs on the same floor, studying the effects of drug addiction. However, they grew marijuana inside their home and used narcotics purchased over the Internet from a Philippine pharmacy that shipped pills hidden inside stuffed animals.

"These are two brilliant people who made a stupid error in judgment," Woessner said in a telephone interview Wednesday. Woessner said she doesn’t think McCracken injected her daughter or forced her to do drugs.

"He loved her and she loved him," she said. "I know this. They’re humans, just like all of us. We all have our faults. Just because drugs is what they studied doesn’t mean anything. Addiction is addiction, no matter what we do, what race we are, what occupation we have."

Baltimore police have charged McCracken, 32, with several drug violations, and a department spokesman said federal authorities have expressed interest in pursuing the case. McCracken is free on bail and declined to comment when reached at his home on Wednesday.

McCracken told police, according to court documents, that he and John "thought they could control the morphine and buprenorphine" and that he thought marijuana should be legalized.

Dr. Donald Jasinski, chief of the center for chemical dependency at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, said it should come as no shock to see doctors or other medical professionals addicted to drugs, especially those who study narcotics and are around the chemicals daily.

"Anybody who handles drugs thinks they know how to control it," he said. "Perhaps the highest risk group for opiate dependency is doctors."

Buprenorphine is commonly used to ease heroin addicts off the drug, and is prevalent in Baltimore and other cities as an alternative to methadone.

Jasinski said doctors "who you think would know better" sometimes like to experiment like everyone else. "How many people try to quit smoking and know that it’s bad for them and want to quit but can’t?" he said.

Woessner said she was angry to discover that lab workers, despite being around controlled drugs and narcotics that would be illegal on the street, were not tested for drug use. Such testing, she said, could have alerted authorities and helped her daughter get treatment before she died.

Karen A. Buckelew, a spokeswoman for the medical school, said drug tests are administered to "certain employees as required by law," but she confirmed that workers in the lab where John and McCracken worked were not monitored regularly.

Woessner described her daughter as a "superstar" and said "everything she did, she did well." She started playing softball at age 7 and continued on a team in Baltimore. She played the clarinet in her high school band and embraced the Native American heritage of her father’s family. She graduated from high school early and enrolled in Cornell University at the age of 17, majoring in biology.

She met McCracken at Wake Forest University as they worked toward doctorates in their shared field of interest, drug addiction. She earned a doctorate in physiology and pharmacology.

She moved to Baltimore in 2006. McCracken left the University of Pittsburgh three months ago to join her. John worked on projects involving schizophrenia and drug use, and last year led a neuroscience discussion on "This is your brain on drugs."

Woessner said she met McCracken several times and that she regarded him as "polite, intelligent, articulate" and someone "who loved my daughter." They planned to live together for a year before marriage, and, she said, McCracken would have made "a perfect son-in-law."

McCracken told authorities that he and John injected themselves with buprenorphine and morphine. Police said they had turned their unkempt house into an indoor marijuana farm, with grow lights and fans vented with aluminum dryer hoses. Police said they found pills in bags, at least 20 bongs, 30 marijuana plants growing up to two feet high and more packed and stored in Mason jars.

According to court documents, McCracken gave police a detailed account of what happened Sunday, saying he and John soaked two buprenorphine pills in water before filtering them and filling two syringes each with 1 mg doses of the drug. He said John, who has asthma, injected first and immediately had trouble breathing. He helped her use her inhaler, and then dialed 911.

She got to the hospital at 6 p.m. and died 49 minutes later. McCracken said he didn’t get a chance to shoot up because John had already gone into distress. Police found her syringe in the living room of the house.

McCracken told police that he didn’t think John overdosed, but instead injected a bad batch of drugs. Police said results of toxicology tests to determine how John died are pending.

Woessner said she met with McCracken on Tuesday and described him as "very upset, because they were playing, they were doing what couples do. This was not an intentional thing."

However, she does not want him at her daughter’s funeral on Saturday. She said some relatives are angry with him and with what happened, and she wants the service to be a place "where I hope to celebrate her life."

Woessner repeated that she doesn’t blame the boyfriend but said, "I say to God, ‘I hope that Clint can someday find some peace with this.’ "

Post-Doctoral Student Studying Drug Addiction Dies After Injecting Buprenorphine is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

Smith died in a hotel in Hollywood, Florida on February 8, 2007, of what was later ruled to be “acute combined drug intoxication.”

CNN reports that one affidavit quoted a pharmacist who refused to fill a prescription written for Smith as saying he warned one doctor he would not give her the drug “unless you want your picture on the front page of the National Enquirer.” An investigator described Smith as a “drug seeker.”

Smith’s boyfriend, Howard K. Stern, and two doctors—Dr. Khristine Eroshevich and Dr. Sandeep Kapoor—were charged with several felonies, including conspiring to furnish controlled substances, unlawfully prescribing a controlled substance, and obtaining fraudulent prescriptions from June 2004 through January 2007.

All three defendants entered not-guilty pleas in May. A preliminary hearing is set for next month.

Smith “was given drugs in excessive amounts,” according to a medical expert consulted and quoted by a state medical board investigator.

Dr. Jill Klessig also told an investigator that “in addition to the prescribing issues, there appears to have been a personal relationship” between Smith and the two doctors involved in the case.

The affidavit references a video clip of Kapoor “kissing and snuggling” with Smith “in a reclined position in a nightclub setting.”

Eroshevich traveled to the Bahamas to visit Smith and was with her for four days in Florida four days before her death, an investigator said in an affidavit.

The doctor personally visited a Burbank, California pharmacy in September 2006 to get a sleep aid—chloral hydrate—for Smith to use in the Bahamas. It was just four days after Smith gave birth to her daughter in Nassau.

The affidavit from Jon Genens, a senior investigator with the California medical board, detailed dozens of prescriptions written for Smith—under several aliases—for a long list of narcotics and sleep aids.

Genens said that even during the time she was pregnant—starting in January 2006—Kapoor prescribed an average of 10 tablets of methadone per day for Smith. He noted that Kapoor lowered the dosage in the last three months of her pregnancy.

The amount and high dosages of dangerous drugs being ordered by doctors concerned Dr. Greg Thompson—the chief pharmacist where most of the prescriptions were filled—so he called a drug expert for advice in late 2006, according to a sworn statement by California Department of Justice Special Agent Jennifer Doss.

“Dr. Thompson stated they might work for a drug addict under supervised care, or with a dying cancer patient in a hospital, or ‘if you were going to kill someone,’ ” Doss said. Thompson told Doss he later “admonished Dr. Eroshevich” about the drugs she was requesting for Smith.

“Dr. Thompson stated Dr. Eroshevich was obviously not familiar with a lot of medications she was prescribing for…Smith,” Doss said in her affidavit.

The Doss affidavit said the doctor used Smith’s boyfriend as a cover to get the prescriptions filled.

“Of the 12 medications found in Anna Nicole Smith’s hotel room at the time of her death, seven medications were prescribed the name of Howard K. Stearn [believed to be Howard K. Stern] by Dr. Eroshevich,” Agent Doss said.

The drugs were apparently personally delivered to Smith in the Bahamas and Florida by her doctor, Doss said.

“It is reasonable to believe that Dr. Eroshevich provided Anna Nicole Smith prescription medications and controlled substances by transporting them from California to Nassau, Bahamas with her on her travels to visit Anna Nicole Smith,” Doss said

Anna Nicole Smith Given Dangerous Drugs is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

Propofol, also known by its brand name Diprivan, is administered intravenously in operating rooms as a general anesthetic, the manufacturer AstraZeneca told CNN. A source close to the investigation told CNN that Dr. Conrad Murray is believed to have administered the drug to Jackson within 24 hours of his death on June 25.

The drug works as a depressant on the central nervous system. "It works on your brain," said Dr. Zeev Kain, the chair of the anesthesiology department at the University of California, Irvine. "It basically puts the entire brain to sleep."

However, once the infusion is stopped, the patient wakes up almost immediately. "So if you’re going to do this, you’d have to have somebody right there giving you the medication and monitoring you continuously," Kain said.

Dr. Hector Vila, chairman of the Ambulatory Surgery Committee for the American Society of Anesthesiologists, said he administers the drug during office procedures such as urology, dentistry, and gynecology. He also said it is the most common anesthetic for colonoscopies.
 

Jackson: Lethal Amounts of Propofol in System is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

While the problem exists in every state, Kentucky led the nation in the abuse of prescription drugs last year, according to the state’s Office of Drug Control Policy. Prescription drug abuse is particularly rampant in Eastern Kentucky. Last year alone, at least 485 people in Kentucky died from prescription drug overdoses. Medical examiners’ records indicate that the drugs most commonly found in those deaths were methadone, oxycodone (found in OxyContin), hydrocodone (found in Vicodin), alprazolam (the anti-anxiety drug Xanax), morphine, diazepam (Valium), and fentanyl.

“It’s an epidemic and I’m afraid we’re losing a whole generation,” Beth Lewis Maze told MSBNC.com. Maze is the Chief Circuit Judge for the 21st Judicial Circuit in Kentucky. “These pain medications are so highly addictive that these young people are digging themselves a very deep hole.” Maze said she sees people from all walks of life at the newly formed drug court. “I see good kids from good families, doctors, lawyers, teachers,” she said.

Greenup County Coroner Neil Wright says that prescription drug abuse is “public enemy number one.” Half of the 50 deaths he logged last year were drug related, and 85 to 90 percent of them involved prescription drug overdoses. “It affects everybody,” he said. “I don’t care, rich, poor, educated or non-educated, it affects everybody.”

“We are drowning in a sea of prescription medication,” said Greenup County Sheriff Keith Cooper, speaking of the many evidence bags he sees that are filled with prescription pill bottles and cash seized during drug arrests. He said that the number of crimes committed by addicts looking for money to buy painkillers have skyrocketed.

At Shepherd’s Shelter in Mount Sterling, KY, run by Pastor Wayne Ross, almost all of the 50 residents are struggling to overcome prescription drug addiction. Kay Fultz, 36, is currently a resident at the shelter and said that she was taking as many as 50 oxycodone pills a day and was selling drugs to support her habit.

“It just starts out as a party drug, you know, every now and then,” Fultz said of oxycodone. “Once you start doing it every day, I mean it just takes compete control of your life.” She also said it’s very simple to obtain, but that once you’re addicted, the costs are severe. “I’ve lost everything. I’ve lost everything and it’s so easy to do.”

Ross asked his residents where they obtained their prescription drugs, and every person in the room had either traveled to Florida to buy them or had purchased them from someone who had bought the pills in Florida. The state has become a notorious destination for addicts and drug dealers in the southeastern US, as pain clinics flourish there and some of them dispense hundreds of drugs after a cursory medical exam.

Fultz explained that you can go to Florida and get everything you need within 24 hours. She added that the medical exam she was given at a Florida pain clinic was not professional at all, and that she was able to obtain drugs by pretending to suffer from pain. “I mean, they look at your MRI, ask you how you are feeling—‘I’m feeling pretty bad’—and you leave there with pills,” she explained.

Local police, federal agents, and medical officials in Florida are targeting prescription drug sales, and they recently passed a law to start regulating and monitoring pain clinics late next year. Kentucky and most other states already have such monitoring laws in place, making it much more difficult for users and addicts to obtain large amounts of prescription drugs.

Sam Kissick, a Kentucky resident who recently lost his 22-year-old daughter Savannah to prescription drug overdose, said, “The drugs, they don’t discriminate and it can happen to anybody. You may never have any idea that your child is exploring or fooling with prescription drugs at all, until they’ve already gone too far with it.”

Prescription Drug Abuse Called an Epidemic in Kentucky is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment