opiates Archives – Addiction Treatment Strategies | Addiction Treatment Strategies

In the United States today, there are more than two million jail and prison inmates, of whom about 15 percent have histories of heroin dependence. Few inmates receive drug abuse treatment while incarcerated or immediately upon release. Research has shown that this population, once released from incarceration, is at high risk of relapse to heroin use, criminal behavior, HIV infection and of overdose death, resulting in a terrible toll on the individuals, their families and our communities.
The World Health Organization supports the international standard that prisoners have the right to access the health services that would be available to…

Abstinence and recovery characterised by employment are priority UK policy objectives to which the extension of mutual aid is considered a major route. This US study illustrates that both the route and the objectives are not just compatible with, but may be promoted by opiate maintenance prescribing.
Summary Buprenorphine is the main alternative to methadone for substitute prescribing treatments for opiate addiction. Like methadone it offers the opiate-type effects patients have become dependent on but in a way which enables them to get on with their lives rather than dominating them. It can be taken daily or once every two or three days and…

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continue to delay making a decision about whether to reclassify drugs containing the opioid h
ydrocodone, to make them more strictly regulated, ABC News reports. The government has been considering the move for 12 years.
The government agencies are considering whether to move hydrocodone from Schedule III to Schedule II, a move that would put the drug in the same category as oxycodone and morphine.
The news report suggests some believe part of the reason for the slow response might be the FDA’s close ties to pain advocacy groups. The FDA says it wants to…

Academics PROFIT By Making the Case for Opioid Painkillers
As an epidemic of narcotic painkiller abuse raged across America in 2006, researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a medical journal report connecting deaths from those drugs to up to a 500% increase prescriptions.
In that same journal, a couple of officials with a little-known group at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health took issue with the paper, issuing their own warning against any attempt to increase regulation of the drugs.
But the article from the UW group did not disclose that over the last decade or so, as this…

 
A bill co-sponsored by Senator Chuck Schumer (NY) and Jay Rockefeller (WV) would require doctors to receive training for prescribing opiate-based narcotics, the Times Union reports. The training would cover clinical standards on safe management of pain, help doctors better identify patients who are vulnerable to addiction, and provide information on alternatives to opiate narcotics for pain management, according to a news release from Sen. Schumer’s office. Under current law, the Drug Enforcement Administration does not require doctors, dentists and other authorized prescribers to undergo training in order to obtain a license to…