Kavanaugh, drinking and stereotypes of alcohol abuse
(Op-Ed by Christopher Smithers)
By Christopher Smithers
Like many Americans, Judge Brett Kavanaugh enjoys his beer.
That much was clear from the Senate hearing last week. Repeatedly during questions, and in his testimony, the Supreme Court nominee reminded us that as a high school student he drank beer with his friends. “Almost everyone did. Sometimes I had too many beers. Sometimes others did,” he said.
Chris & Brinkley Smithers on NBC
Chris Smithers and his daughter, Brinkley Smithers, join NBC News 4 in New York to discuss how Brinkley was inspired to create the "Hey Charlie" PSA to help #StopTheSpiral of opioid addiction.
A Teen Wrote and Co-Directed This Powerful PSA About the Rapid Spiral of Opioid Addiction
(Adweek)
'Hey Charlie' aims to promote medical treatment over faith-based recovery
HIV/AIDS taught us how to beat the opioid epidemic
(Salon)
The United States is not the only nation wrestling with opioid addiction. It is, however, one of the few nations unwilling to do much about it, even though the word “opioid” is spread across newspaper headlines daily, and Americans are dying of overdose in droves.
After Many Years, The FDA Announces Loosened Standards For Addiction Medication Approval
Only a month after being sworn in, US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex M. Azar II has announced, in a major breach with longstanding tradition, that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will loosen its approval requirements for medications to treat individuals with substance use disorders. In the context of the opioid overdose epidemic, his announcement builds on the FDA’s recent momentum to contain the crisis through improving access to evidence-based treatment under the impressive leadership of director Scott Gottlieb, MD. Changes in federal regulation are often needed to effectively respond to an epidemic of this scale, such as the AIDS epidemic during the 1980s and 1990s. However, Secretary Azar’s announcement is not free of peril.
Read Our Letter to Judge Polster about the Opioid Crisis
Judge Polster is ruling on hundreds of federal lawsuits brought by local governments against members of the opioid industry in the wake of the opioid epidemic. We sent this letter to Judge Polster asking him to help us #StopTheSpiral of opioid addiction by dedicating a significant portion of any potential settlement funds to providing evidence-based treatment for people combating OUD.
With 175 Americans dying a day, what are the solutions to the opioid epidemic?
More than 175 Americans will die today of drug overdoses.
The daily death toll from drug overdoses is like a 737 crashing and killing all the passengers on board. If plane crashes like that happened a few days in a row, “we’d shut the skies down until we figured out the problem,” said former Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore.
For opiate addiction, study finds drug-assisted treatment is more effective than detox
Say you're a publicly insured Californian with an addiction to heroin, fentanyl or prescription narcotics, and you want to quit.
Why Opioid Addicts Find M.A.T. Hard to Come By
Drug overdoses killed 64,000 Americans last year — most of them involving painkillers or other opioids. Addiction experts are in wide agreement on the most effective way to help addicts: medication-assisted treatment. They say that wider adoption of this method would save lives.
FDA’s Gottlieb calls for greater use of medication-assisted treatment to fight opioid epidemic
Scott Gottlieb, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, called Wednesday for the expanded use of medication-assisted treatments for opioid addiction, saying they could reduce overdoses and deaths.