Overdose on Painkillers at All Time High

Nov 03, 2011

Issues: Prescription Drug Abuse

Coalition resources: Data Analysis

Drug type: Prescription Drug

The death toll from overdoses of prescription painkillers has more than tripled in the past decade, according to an analysis in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Vital Signs report released this week. This new finding shows that more than 40 people die every day from overdoses involving narcotic pain relievers like hydrocodone (Vicodin), methadone, oxycodone (OxyContin), and oxymorphone (Opana). The death rate was highest among persons aged 35–54 years. 

“Overdoses involving prescription painkillers are at epidemic levels and now kill more Americans than heroin and cocaine combined,” said CDC Director Thomas Frieden. “States, health insurers, health care providers and individuals have critical roles to play in the national effort to stop this epidemic of overdoses while we protect patients who need prescriptions to control pain.” The increased use of prescription painkillers for nonmedical reasons (without a prescription for the high they cause), along with growing sales, has contributed to the large number of overdoses and deaths. In 2010, 1 in every 20 people in the United States age 12 and older—a total of 12 million people—reported using prescription painkillers non-medically, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

Based on the data from the Drug Enforcement Administration, sales of these drugs to pharmacies and health care providers have increased by more than 300 percent since 1999.

The study found:

• State death rates from overdoses (from 2008 data) ranged from a high of 27.0 deaths per 100,000 people in New Mexico to a low of 5.5 deaths per 100,000 people in Nebraska.

• Nonmedical use of prescription painkillers ranged from a high of 1 in 12 people aged 12 and older in Oklahoma to a low of 1 in 30 in Nebraska.

• States with more non-medical use tend to have more deaths from drug overdoses.

• Prescription painkiller sales per person were more than three times higher in the highest state, Florida, than in the lowest state, Illinois. States with higher sales per person tend to have higher death rates from drug overdose.

CDC is releasing “Policy Impact: Prescription Painkiller Overdoses,” one in a series of issue briefs highlighting key public health issues and important, science-based policy actions that can be taken to address them. Through this new publication, CDC supports state-based efforts to reduce prescription drug abuse while ensuring patients have access to safe, effective pain treatment. CADCA’s website, preventrxabuse.org, also offers resources for coalitions interested in getting involved in reducing prescription drug abuse.

Teens and Prescription Drug Abuse…Higher Statistics Than One Would Think!

Oct 20, 2011

Issues: Over the Counter Drug Abuse, Prescription Drug Abuse

Drug type: Over the Counter, Prescription Drug

CADCA and the Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA), which represents the leading makers of over-the-counter (OTC) medicines, have joined forces to honor their annual National Medicine Abuse Awareness Month campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of youth prescription and OTC medicine abuse.

The U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution last month that named October as National Medicine Abuse Awareness Month. The joint CADCA and CHPA campaign features a coordinated and concentrated effort to educate parents and youth of the potential dangers associated with prescription and OTC medicine abuse.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy reports that medicine abuse is our nation’s fastest-growing drug problem. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, in 2010, 2.4 million people abused prescription drugs for the first time. In addition, the 2010 Monitoring the Future Survey found that five percent of teens have abused over-the-counter cough medicines—sometimes as much as 25 to 50 times the recommended dose—containing the active ingredient dextromethorphan to get high over the past year. When abused in extreme excess, dextromethorphan can produce dangerous side effects, especially when combined with alcohol, illicit drugs, or certain prescription drugs.

“While prescription and over-the-counter medicines are safe and necessary for many people, too many teens are abusing these drugs to get high. We hope that our efforts during National Medicine Abuse Awareness Month will raise awareness of the numbers of young people who currently abuse medicines, and spur communities to action to prevent and reduce medicine abuse among youth,” said Gen. Arthur T. Dean, CADCA’s chairman and CEO.

“As we work toward curbing teen cough medicine abuse, education and community engagement continue to be our most valuable tools,” said CHPA President and CEO Scott M. Melville. “National Medicine Abuse Awareness Month offers us the opportunity to provide additional resources to communities interested in raising awareness among parents and teens about the dangers of abusing cough medicine. Additionally, the leading makers of OTC cough medicines and our partners realize that as we tackle this issue head-on our efforts would be bolstered with federal legislative initiatives that would give parents further tools to address this type of abuse.”

These initiatives include a federal ban on sales of OTC cough medicines to teens under the age of 18 and a federal restriction against the sale of the raw, unfinished form of dextromethorphan to anyone other than an entity registered by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

National Medicine Abuse Awareness Month coincides with the beginning of the school year and offers a platform for communities nationwide to become involved in this important issue and to take advantage of free and downloadable free and downloadable educational materials. As a part of this effort, community anti-drug coalitions in more than 50 locations throughout the country will be hosting town hall meetings and educational forums in their communities throughout the month of October. These coalitions have access to the online toolkit—A Dose of Prevention: Stopping Cough Medicine Abuse Before It Starts—created by CHPA and CADCA. In addition, CADCA has developed a toolkit to help substance abuse prevention leaders reduce prescription drug abuse, titled Rx Abuse Prevention Toolkit: From Awareness to Action.

To view the materials or to learn more about all of CADCA and CHPA’s activities to help curb prescription and OTC cough medicine abuse, visit PreventRxAbuse.org and StopMedicineAbuse.org.

NIAAA Study on Lack of Counsel to Young Adults on Drinking Habits

Oct 13, 2011

Issues: Abuse, Binge Drinking

Coalition resources: Data Analysis

Drug type: Alcohol

Physicians often fail to counsel their young adult patients about excessive alcohol use, according to a study led by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health.

NIAAA guidelines for low-risk drinking call for men to drink no more than four drinks in a day and no more than 14 drinks per week. For women, the guidelines are three or fewer drinks per day and no more than seven drinks per week. Previous studies have shown that screening and brief interventions by health care providers such as asking patients about alcohol use and advising them to reduce risky drinking can promote significant, lasting reductions in drinking levels and alcohol-related problems. In addition to NIAAA, professional groups such as the American Medical Association and the American Society of Addiction Medicine, as well as the U.S Preventive Services Task Force, recommend routine screening for alcohol misuse in primary care and brief interventions for individuals who screen positive.

In the current study, Ralph W. Hingson, director of NIAAA’s division of epidemiology and prevention research, and colleagues at Boston University School of Public Health and Boston Medical Center conducted a random survey of more than 4,000 people in the United States between the ages of 18 and 39. The researchers asked survey participants about their drinking habits and whether they had been seen by a doctor during the past year. Those who had seen a doctor were asked additional questions to determine whether the doctor had assessed their alcohol use and advised them about safe drinking practices during the visit. The researchers report that 16 percent of those surveyed were non-drinkers, 24 percent drank at or below daily or weekly limits, 47 percent exceeded daily or weekly limits, and 13 percent exceeded both.

The findings are published online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

“Two-thirds of the people we surveyed had been seen by a doctor in the past year,” Dr. Hingson said. “However, of individuals whose drinking exceeded NIAAA guidelines, only 49 percent recalled being asked about their drinking, and only 14 percent were counseled about it. Young adults between ages 18 and 25 were the most likely to report drinking in excess of NIAAA guidelines, and only 34 percent of them were asked about drinking by their doctors, compared with 54 percent of adults ages 26 to 39.”

“In the United States, excessive alcohol use is the third leading preventable cause of death,” NIAAA Acting Director Kenneth Warren, said. “It’s also a significant cause of disability for men and women in this country. The findings reported by Dr. Hingson and his colleagues indicate that we must redouble our efforts to help clinicians make alcohol screening and brief intervention a routine part of patient care in the United States.”

NIAAA’s ‘Helping Patients Who Drink Too Much: A Clinician’s Guide, available at the NIAAA website, provides a research-based, simplified approach to alcohol screening and brief intervention for both primary care and mental health clinicians.

Insufficient Sleep Impacts Teen’s Health-Risk Behaviors

Sep 29, 2011

Issues: Binge Drinking, Smoking, Underage drinking

Coalition resources: Data Analysis

Drug type: Alcohol, Marijuana, Tobacco

About 70 percent of U.S. high school students don’t get enough sleep on school nights and this is linked to health-risk behaviors, according to a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

They concluded that insufficient sleep is associated with a variety of health-risk behaviors, including: physical inactivity, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, drinking soda, fighting, being sexually active, marijuana use and seriously considering attempting suicide.

High school students participating in the 2007 national Youth Risk Behavior Survey were asked, “On an average school night, how many hours of sleep do you get?”

The study, published online by Preventive Medicine, said 68.9 percent of adolescent responders reported insufficient sleep on an average school night. Insufficient sleep was considered less than 8 hours and sufficient sleep 8 or more hours of sleep.

Students who reported insufficient sleep were more likely to engage in the health-risk behavior than students who reported sufficient sleep, researchers said.

“Many adolescents are not getting the recommended hours of sleep they need on school nights. Insufficient sleep is associated with participation in a number of health-risk behaviors including substance use, physical fighting, and serious consideration of suicide attempt,” Lela McKnight-Eily of the CDC said in a statement to United Press International.

McKnight-Eily recommended public health intervention, and the consideration of delayed school start times to help students get more shut-eye.

Why eating dinner with your teen is important!

Sep 22, 2011

Drug type: Alcohol, Tobacco

Compared to teens who have frequent family dinners (five to seven per week), those who have infrequent family dinners (fewer than three per week) are almost four times likelier to use tobacco; more than twice as likely to use alcohol; two-and-a-half times likelier to use marijuana; and almost four times likelier to say they expect to try drugs in the future, according to The Importance of Family Dinners VII, a new report from The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA Columbia).

The CASA Columbia family dinners report revealed that teens who have infrequent family dinners are likelier to say they have ready access to alcohol, prescription drugs (without a prescription in order to get high) or marijuana. Compared to teens who have frequent family dinners, those who have infrequent family dinners are more likely to be able to get alcohol, prescription drugs or marijuana in an hour or less. In contrast, teens who have frequent family dinners are more likely to report having no access to such drugs.

The CASA Columbia family dinners report reveals that 58 percent of teens report having dinner with their families at least five times a week, a proportion that has remained consistent over the past decade.
 
“This year’s study reinforces the importance of frequent family dinners,” said Joseph A. Califano, Jr., CASA Columbia’s Founder and Chairman and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. “Ninety percent of Americans who meet the medical criteria for addiction started smoking, drinking, or using other drugs before age 18. Parental engagement in children’s lives is key to raising healthy, drug-free kids and one of the simplest acts of parental engagement is sitting down to the family dinner. Seventeen years of surveying teens has taught us that the more often children have dinner with their families the less likely they are to smoke, drink or use drugs.”

Coalitions are encouraged to put the theory into practice at Family Day — A Day to Eat Dinner with Your Children on Monday, Sept. 26. The national movement launched by CASA Columbia in 2001 reminds parents that frequent family dinners make a difference. CADCA is a partner in this national, annual event.

National Drugs Facts Week

Sep 09, 2011

Teens and drug experts will connect for the second annual National Drug Facts Week, held Oct. 31 through Nov. 6. This week-long observance will bring together teens and scientific experts in community events across the country to discuss scientific facts about drug abuse. It is sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a component of the National Institutes of Health. 
 
“This week-long observance is designed to counteract the many drug abuse myths that bombard today’s youth,” said NIDA Director Dr. Nora D. Volkow in a news release. “We have learned that teens are craving factual information about drug risks and dangers to help them make smart choices.”

National Drug Facts Week encourages community-based question and answer sessions between teens and scientists. Events can be sponsored by a variety of organizations, including schools, community groups, sports clubs, book clubs, and local hospitals. NIDA provides an online toolkit that advises teens and their sponsoring organizations on to how create an event, how to publicize it, how to find a scientific expert, and where to find scientific information on drugs. NIDA will support event holders by offering its popular teen booklet, Drugs: Shatter the Myths, free of charge as well as a new online National Drug IQ Challenge , a 10-question multiple choice quiz that teens and adults can take to test their knowledge about drugs.
 
“We expect to build on the success of our 2010 National Drug Facts Week, which garnered more than 100 events in communities around the country,” stated Volkow. “NIDA is actively working with federal, regional and local partners to build events that will expose teens to the science behind drug abuse.”

Organizations wishing to hold events during National Drug Facts Week can visit http://drugfactsweek.drugabuse.gov/planyourevent.php or email drugfacts@nida.nih.gov.

 

Grant Competition

$500 Million for Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge

New State Competition to Establish and Expand High-Quality, Early Learning Programs

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius recently announced the Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge, a new $500 million state-level grant competition.

“For kids, high quality early learning programs mean they will enter school better prepared with a greater chance of finishing high school and college,” said Vice President Joe Biden, Chairman of the Administration’s Middle Class Task Force. “Expanding access to such early education and child care programs will also make it easier for working parents to hold down a job – a key priority of the Middle Class Task Force – giving them peace of mind that their children are in a high quality learning environment while they are at work.”

“To win the future, our children need a strong start,” said Secretary Duncan. “The Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge encourages states to develop bold and comprehensive plans for raising the quality of early learning programs across America.”

“This Challenge represents the Obama Administration’s commitment to helping vulnerable children and families reach their full potential,” said Secretary Sebelius. “Our collective health and financial security as a nation will depend on high quality investments during the critical early years of a child’s life.”

The Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge will reward states that create comprehensive plans to transform early learning systems with better coordination, clearer learning standards, and meaningful workforce development. Secretary Duncan and Secretary Sebelius also challenged the broader innovation community – leading researchers, high-tech entrepreneurs, foundations, non-profits and others – to engage with the early learning community and to close the school readiness gap.

States applying for challenge grants will be encouraged to increase access to quality early learning programs for low income and disadvantaged children, design integrated and transparent systems that align their early care and education programs, bolster training and support for the early learning workforce, create robust evaluation systems to document and share effective practices and successful programs, and help parents make informed decisions about care for their children.

According to the Department of Education, research shows that high-quality early learning programs lead to long-lasting positive outcomes for children, including increased rates of high school graduation, college attendance and college completion. Yet, just 40 percent of 4-year olds in America are currently enrolled in preschool programs. The most recent report from the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) indicates that, for the first time in a decade, states are reducing some of their key investments in early learning.

The Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge grants will encourage states to make the best possible use of current federal and state investments in child care and early learning. The Obama Administration has sought and secured increased investments in Head Start and child care so that more families have access to quality, affordable care, while also pursuing important reforms such as requiring Head Start grantees to compete for continued funding. The administration has also steered resources towards evidence-based, cost-effective home visiting programs.

The Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge will be administered jointly by the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services. The grants are expected to be awarded to states no later than December 31, 2011.

NCLB is dead!

NCLB is DEAD!

 

Call toll FREE 800.838.3444 visit www.smriinc.com

 

Long Live NCLB!

 

In a recent news release, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan commented that No Child Left Behind “is creating a slow-motion train wreck for children, parents and teachers.”  “I remain hopeful and confident that Congress will soon take action to strengthen and upgrade the nation’s education law.  But while Congress works, state and local school districts are buckling under the law’s goals and mandates,”Duncansaid.  “Despite our shared sentiment for reform and our long-standing proposal to reshape No Child Left Behind, the law remains in place, four years after it was due for reauthorization.  Our children get only one shot at an education and they cannot wait any longer for reform.  We must fix No Child Left Behind, not inWashingtontime, but in real people time.”  Both President Obama and Secretary Duncan have met repeatedly with members of Congress to advance negotiations on the law.  The administration released a blueprint back in March 2010 outlining proposed changes, and just last March the President reissued a call for reform.

Regulatory Flexibility

The Obama Administration plans to provide regulatory flexibility around No Child Left Behind (NCLB) if Congress does not complete work on a reauthorization bill prior to the August recess, in order to help support reform efforts underway at the state and local level.  Duncansaid that regulatory flexibility will not replace comprehensive reform, or give states and districts a pass from accountability.  Instead, the goal is to “unleash energy at the local level even as Congress works to rewrite the law, giving states, districts and schools the flexibility they need to raise standards, boost quality and improve our lowest-performing schools.”  Teachers, parents, school leaders, governors, members of Congress and the U.S. Department of Education have all called for reforming NCLB.  To avoid sanctions under the current law, many states have lowered academic standards instead of making them more rigorous, and states spend billions of dollars every year on NCLB’s one-size-fits-all mandates.

Advertising and Teen Alcohol Consumption

Jul 14, 2011

Issues: Alcohol Advertising, Binge Drinking

Coalition resources: Data Analysis

Drug type: Alcohol

Advertising effectively promotes alcohol brands to teens, researchers from Dartmouth Medical School and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found in a study published in this month’s issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Dartmouth pediatricians Susanne Tanski, Auden McClure and James Sargent found a correlation between alcohol companies’ annual advertising expenditures and underage drinkers’ preferred brands in the study “Alcohol Brand Preference and Binge Drinking among Adolescents.”

The researchers also found that respondents who said they had a favorite brand were significantly more likely to report having engaged in binge drinking than those who did not specify a favorite. “

Youths chose distilled spirit brands in large numbers, brands preferred by youth have tended to have high advertising expenditures, and choosing a favorite brand was associated with binge drinking,” the researchers concluded.

“The important take-home message is that kids who said they have a favorite brand were far more likely to binge drink,” Tanski said in a Dartmouth news release.

Two-thirds of those surveyed said they had a favorite brand of alcohol, with Smirnoff and Budweiser leading as the first and second favorite brands among women, respectively, and Budweiser and Smirnoff as the first and second favorite brands among men.

The correlation between binge drinking and brand favoritism “suggests that the ‘drink responsibly’ message is being swamped by other advertising messages that associate alcohol brands with partying and drinking to excess,” Tanski said, citing a recent Captain Morgan rum commercial as an example.

Future studies will also measure brand consumption, according to David Jernigan, an author of the study and associate professor at the Bloomberg School. He told The Dartmouth that half of the respondents chose a distilled spirits brand as their drink of choice.

CADCA is developing a video tool and publication to help coalitions address college-age binge drinking. Stay tuned.

Study including teens and addictive substances…

Jun 30, 2011

Coalition resources: Data Analysis

This week the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University released a report calling teen substance use the worst public health problem in America.

CASA’s national study declares teen smoking, drinking, misusing prescription drugs and using illegal drugs a public health problem of epidemic proportions. The report reviews current knowledge of the science of addiction as a complex brain disease with origins in adolescence, documents how adolescence is the critical period for the initiation of substance use, and reveals the enormous and costly health and social consequences of teen substance use.

The study looks at how American culture increases the risk that teens will use addictive substances and how the messages sent by adults, and glamorized by the tobacco and alcohol industries and the media, normalize substance use and undermine the health and futures of our teens.

Highlights from the report include:

•90 percent of Americans who meet the medical criteria for addiction started smoking, drinking, or using other drugs before age 18.

•1 in 4 Americans who began using any addictive substance before age 18 developed an addiction, compared to 1 in 25 Americans who started using at age 21 or older.

•75 percent of all high school students have used addictive substances including tobacco, alcohol, marijuana or cocaine; 1 in 5 of them meets the medical criteria for addiction.

•46 percent of all high school students currently use addictive substances; 1 in 3 of them meets the medical criteria for addiction.

“The problem is not that we don’t know what to do, it’s that we are failing to act. It is time to recognize teen substance use as a preventable public health problem and addiction as a treatable medical disease, and to respond to it as fiercely as we would to any other public health epidemic threatening the safety of our children,” Susan Foster, CASA’s Vice President and Director of Policy Research and Analysis said in a news release.