Pain doctors have long clashed with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) over opiate-based pain medications, and now Angela Gardner, the head of the American College of Emergency Physicians is warning against making doctors "pain police."
Gardner objected to proposals that would require physicans -- including ER docs -- to search a database for patients’ drug-use history before prescribing drugs. Requiring that prescription information be recorded to the database also could discourage some patients from getting proper care, Gardner said.
"As an emergency physician, I can assure you that the drug abusers who use the emergency room simply to get a prescription-drug fix represent a micropopulation of the 120-million patients who seek emergency care every year in the USA" ...
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Reclaiming Futures project is beginning to transition from the relatively secure world of foundation funding to the more arduous task of seeking multiple sources of support, but will have to find its way without the stewardship of longtime national program director Laura Nissen.
Nissen announced on June 7 that she plans to step down in May 2011 once a successor is in place, citing a desire to "concentrate on teaching and research in my role as a faculty member at the School of Social Work at Portland State University."
The ’pharming party’ may or may not be a myth, but it’s certain that high-school students are taking a lot of prescription drugs -- often without a prescription ... Drug courts are a ’top priority’ for the Justice Department, AG Holder says ... People with addictions and mental illness are big smokers, but a new study sees tax hikes as a way to get them to quit ... Big Tobacco and friends want the courts to block NYC from posting graphic antismoking warnings in stores, saying that consumers could be turned off. Isn’t that sort of the idea?
Eric Morris’s always-entertaining Freakonomics blog at the New York Times this week asks what works in getting people to drink less alcohol. As usual, the economist references an impressive array of research as he weighs in on the various interventions available.
Morris’ conclusion: screening and brief intervention has the most promise, and while restrictions on alcohol advertising seems to work, it’s doubtful that serious curbs will ever be enacted.
Here’s a retailer that doesn’t discount public opinion: the owner of TJ Maxx pulled drinking games from store shelves after an inquiry from a Boston reporter ... a Saudi treatment program is looking to the U.S. for a model for improving services in a country where Islam prohibits any use of alcohol or other drugs ... Pink cigarettes, anyone? Tobacco companies are ramping up marketing to women in poor countries as smoking among men declines ... No spitting, smoking or swearing: An upstate New York college is using positive peer pressure to fight bad behaviors.
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