Drug abuse

  • The Case for Chicago’s Public Health Vending Machines

    The Case for Chicago’s Public Health Vending Machines

    On November 2, 2023, the Chicago Department of Public Health launched its first Public Health Vending Machine at Harold Washington Library as part of a one-year pilot program aimed at providing harm reduction and opioid overdose prevention supplies. This pilot program deploys a total of five Public Health Vending Machines…

  • Opioid Use and Employment: A Complicated Relationship

    Opioid Use and Employment: A Complicated Relationship

    Opioid use can be traced back at least as far as the end of the 3rd millennium B.C., with notable crises worldwide in both the 19th and 20th centuries. However, today’s epidemic is “the worst drug addiction epidemic in [U.S.] history,” accounting for the deaths of 72,000 Americans in 2017…

  • Preventing Opioid Abuse Through Mandatory Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs

    Preventing Opioid Abuse Through Mandatory Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs

    A new study suggests that mandatory physician-led monitoring of opioid prescriptions may be an important tool in the effort to combat opioid abuse. The opioid epidemic is an increasingly serious problem in the United States, with over 50,000 people killed by opioid overdoses in 2017. President Trump declared the crisis…

  • U.S. DEA Report Indicates Tripling of Heroin Consumption Over Seven Years

    U.S. DEA Report Indicates Tripling of Heroin Consumption Over Seven Years

    Heroin consumption in the United States nearly tripled between 2007 and 2014, and it is now the cause of 10,000 deaths per year, according to an annual report released by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The report, compiled from 1,444 surveys of a nationally representative sample of state, local,…