Wolf wants to put limit on opioid prescriptions for minors
Youths could be given only a week’s worth
Kids shouldn’t be prescribed bottles full of addictive opioids, Gov. Tom Wolf said Tuesday, adding to his legislative to-do list ahead of a major speech today on the overdose epidemic.
Saying he doesn’t want more cases in which a young person “throws their knee out in field hockey and becomes addicted to opioids,” the governor swung behind legislation, introduced last week, that would bar prescribers from giving a minor more than a week’s worth of the painkillers.
“We lost 3,500, almost, Pennsylvanians last year [to drug overdoses], and it looks like more than that will die this year,” said Mr. Wolf, who has made the fight against opioids a central focus of his administration. “This is a plague, and we’ve got to stop it.”
Also Tuesday, newly released data showed that the incidence of newborns with neonatal abstinence syndrome — opioid dependence driven by exposure in the womb — has increased nearly tenfold in 15 years. Last year, 2,691 newborns in the state had substance-related conditions, of whom 82 percent had neonatal abstinence syndrome.