'It's all fentanyl': opioid crisis takes shape in Philadelphia as overdoses surge. By Edward Helmore // Drugmakers ‘Complicit’ In Opioid Crisis

By Dilip -
Last week, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released figures indicating that a sharp rise in drug overdose deaths, which many attribute in part to fentanyl, is causing a drop in American life expectancy. Opioids killed almost 64,000 people in 2016. The figure for 2017 is likely to be higher again. In October, Donald Trump declared a public health emergency.

On the streets of Kensington, a crisis is taking shape that an anti-drug advertising campaign proposed by Trump may do little to ease. “Fentanyl has drastically changed the landscape,” Trainor said. “Sixty-four percent of fatals in Philadelphia County are fentanyl-related. There’s no dope out here now, it’s all fentanyl. Even the old timers are scared of it.”

In Kensington, many addicts congregate in a small park. It has become busier since authorities fenced off and filled in “the Tracks”, an aptly named encampment near train lines where residents once set up tables and mirrors to aid fixing in the neck. Others moved to an underpass on Emerald Street, known as Emerald City. In either area, even addicts now carry Narcan. It’s an optimistic gesture, but barely. Nationally, over the past three years, fentanyl-related deaths have increased by 540%. For the first time, the majority of fatal overdoses are fentanyl-related, accounting for “nearly all the increases in drug overdose deaths from 2015 to 2016”, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. In Philadelphia, a city previously known for pure and relatively inexpensive heroin, there have been nearly 800 fentanyl overdoses this year... read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/27/its-all-fentanyl-opioid-crisis-takes-shape-in-philadelphia-as-overdoses-surge

Chicago Area Officials Demand Accountability For Drugmakers ‘Complicit’ In Opioid Crisis
“We believe a good start is to aggressively confront one of the root causes of this national epidemic: the pharmaceutical companies and those paid by the pharmaceutical companies who put profits before public health and safety,” Preckwinkle added.  The officials want the companies to pay monetary damages for costs incurred by the county’s hospitals and jail for treating the opioid crisis. The goal is to “hold accountable those who have been complicit in the creation of this epidemic,” Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said in a statement. The lawsuit cites the companies’ “coordinated, sophisticated, and highly deceptive marketing” of prescription painkillers like OxyContin and Percocet, which public health officials have named as a major cause of the opioid crisis....

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