Colleges to get opioid treatment spray
Colleges will be able to get several free doses of a drug that can reverse opioid overdoses, a sign of the widening impact of the deadly epidemic and increased efforts to combat it.
The Clinton Foundation and Adapt Pharma are working together to give colleges 40,000 doses of NARCAN nasal spray, which is the only FDA-approved nasal spray and is designed to be simple enough to administer that people without medical training can provide a potentially lifesaving dose.
More than 33,000 people died of opioid overdoses in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, exceeding the number killed by guns for the first time.
The program has three goals, said Mike Kelly, the U.S. president of Adapt Pharma: Education, awareness and expansion of naloxone. There’s a stigma about the disease, he said, “and getting people to talk about it in an open forum, in schools, is a good place to start. There is an antidote. People don’t have to die. … There’s a simple, ready, easy-to-use product on the marketplace.”
The effort, announced Monday by Kelly and former president Bill Clinton, expands upon an earlier initiative that has given out more than 3,000 free doses of NARCAN Nasal Spray to high schools in 33 states.
“It’s going to be a catalyst to get it into colleges and high schools across the country,” Kelly said.
BOSTON — Meet a victim of the nation’s opioid addiction scourge: the American worker.
A number of U.S. states, including Ohio, are taking steps through their workers’ compensation systems to stem the overprescribing of the powerful painkillers to workers injured on the job, while helping those who became hooked to avoid potentially deadly consequences.
Injured workers, like so many others dealing with pain, are often prescribed opioids like OxyContin and Vicodin.
“I was eating them up like they were candy,” said Jimmy Duran of Boston, who was prescribed opioids for years after hurting his neck and fracturing vertebrae in a workplace accident in 2004. A commercial mover, Duran was hit and thrown 30 feet by a moving truck.
“OxyContin, Percocet, morphine. ... It ruined my life,” he said. “It brought me to my knees.”
Unable to work, broke and desperate to feed his habit, Duran said he eventually began dealing cocaine to bring in cash, a mistake that landed him in jail for two years. Free of addiction now, he has become a licensed counselor at a substance-use prevention and treatment program.
In all, about 2.8 million private-industry workers and 752,000 public-sector employees suffered nonfatal workplace injuries in 2015, more than half resulting in time away from work, according to the most recent figures from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
According to a survey by CompPharma, an industry group that seeks to control workers’ compensation spending, more than $1.5 billion was spent on opioids by workers’ compensation insurers in 2015, with prescriptions for injured workers accounting for 13 percent of total opioid pharmacy costs in the U.S. that year. Survey respondents cited opioids and addiction as their most pressing concern.
A separate study of 337,000 workers’ compensation claims in 25 states published last year by the independent Workers Compensation Research Institute found that 55 to 85 percent of injured workers who missed seven days or more of work received at least one opioid prescription.
Rates of longer-term opioid use varied widely among states, the study found, including 1 in 6 injured workers in Louisiana, and 1 in 10 in California, New York and Pennsylvania, but only 1 in 30 in New Jersey and Missouri.
Omar Hernandez, an administrative judge who resolves workers compensation disputes for the Massachusetts Division of Industrial Accidents, said injured workers belie a common misconception of addicts as people shooting up in back alleys.
“These are people from all walks of life that didn’t ask to get injured,” he said. “These are hard-working people who unfortunately suffered a work-related injury ... and are now hooked on these drugs.”
Other states are changing policies, as well.
Under new rules issued by the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation, reimbursement for opioid prescriptions can be denied if it’s believed physicians are overprescribing or otherwise failing to follow “best medical practices” in treating injured workers. The rules require physicians to develop individualized treatment plans and closely monitor workers receiving opioids.
The rules also allow the bureau to provide treatment for opioid dependence to workers who got hooked on painkillers after getting hurt.
Those and previous steps taken by Ohio to combat opioid abuse have resulted in 44 percent fewer injured workers receiving opioids in the past five years, saving $46 million in drug costs, said Melissa Vince, a spokeswoman for the bureau.