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from the Antidiarrheal-overdose?-Oh,-crap! dept.
NPR is reporting on the latest drug scare, involving an over-the-counter antidiarrheal drug that is being used for its opioid-like effects by addicts:
Some people addicted to oxycodone and other opioids are now turning to widely available diarrhea medications to manage their withdrawal symptoms or get high. The results can be dangerous to the heart — and sometimes fatal — warn toxicologists in a study [open, DOI: 10.1016/j.annemergmed.2016.03.047] recently published online in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.
The researchers describe two case studies where people who were addicted to opioids tried to ease their withdrawal symptoms by taking many times the recommended dose of loperamide, a drug commonly used treat diarrhea. Both patients died.
"Because of its low cost, ease of accessibility and legal status, it's a drug that is very, very ripe for abuse," says lead author William Eggleston, a doctor of pharmacy and fellow in clinical toxicology at the Upstate New York Poison Center, which is affiliated with SUNY Upstate Medical University.
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4/20: Half-Baked Headline
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2016, @07:18PM
So in other words, if we don't want loperamide abused, we should treat opiate addiction as a medical problem rather than a criminal one
No no no, NO... we cannot do that. We've contracted out the building and running of prisons to private corporations and in those contracts, there are clauses that say "the government *shall* pay at a minimum to $PRIVATE_CORP the rate of an 80% occupation of the facility even if the facility is occupied at a lower rate, it shall pay the exact rate of occupation if the facility is occupied more than 80%". Thus, we need to fill those beds. If we don't it's just throwing away money and someone might bring it up in the next election cycle that $OFFICIAL approved this stupid plan...
Can't have any of that happening now, can we?