Last week, a Rolling Stone article celebrated country music artists who are singing and speaking about the opioid crisis and their own experiences with substance use disorder. Country music artist Jamie Wyatt, who was interviewed for the article and spoke in favor of harm reduction, shared the article on Instagram...
A recent survey of U.S. college students published in JAMA Pediatrics found that while more than half of the students surveyed could correctly identify the signs of an opioid overdose and expressed a willingness to intervene, just one in seven students knew how to administer naloxone. While there is...
In March, a Kentucky child died after having a suspected allergic reaction to strawberries. The Hopkins County Health Department advised residents to dispose of strawberries purchased at a local school fundraiser out of an abundance of caution, but FDA testing later determined that the strawberries were safe. Last week, the...
A new Florida law will make it a felony to expose first responders to fentanyl or other chemically similar drugs when the exposure results in physical harm. Experts from American College of Medical Toxicology and American Academy of Clinical Toxicology said this law will create an “unnecessary concern,” as the...
Last week, a nonprofit in Walker County, Alabama, installed the state’s first Narcan vending machine, which offers free naloxone as a nasal spray or as an intramuscular injection. Organizers behind the project say Walker County, which has a population of fewer than 65,000 people, has one of the...
Last week, U.S. senators Tim Kaine and Ted Cruz introduced the STOP TRANQ Act, a bill that would require reporting on xylazine, or “tranq,” in the State Department’s annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. In a social media post about the bill, Senator Cruz wrote, “What is tranq?...
Last week, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker announced that “not one city dollar” will be used to fund the distribution of sterile syringes to people who use drugs. Parker’s administration still plans to use money from opioid settlement funds to support other harm reduction services, such as the distribution of...
The Biden administration recently launched an initiative called the Challenge to Save Lives from Overdose, described as a nationwide call to increase training on and access to opioid overdose reversal medications like naloxone. This follows the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of over-the-counter Narcan spray and the...
Recently, the Providence City Council approved Rhode Island’s first “safe injection site” in February 2024, sparking conversation about opioids, overdoses, and harm reduction online. Rhode Island became the first state in the U.S. to authorize overdose prevention centers more than two years ago, and the newly approved Providence...
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