When I started as a paramedic in Hartford in 1995, I thought drug users had character flaws and belonged in jail. Last week at a panel discussion in Hartford I stood up before National Drug Control Policy Acting Director Regina LaBelle, United States Senator Richard Blumenthal, United States Representative John Larsen, and the Mayor of Hartford Luke Bronin and urged them to consider decriminalization of drug use, creation of a safe, regulated drug supply and support for safe injection sites.  I told them I believed the War on Drugs had been a failure and that while we all recognized now that this crisis is a public health problem, not a law enforcement problem, we needed to take Public Health ACTION.  People who we recognize suffer from the medical disease of addiction, have no choice but to go to Park Street or some other place where drugs can be had. They buy the drugs that are offered, but they have no way of knowing the dose they are getting.  Fentanyl test strips can tell a user if fentanyl is...

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She took the Dilaudid pill a friend offered her twelve years ago when she was sixteen.  Her sister had recently died and her young life, filled with depression and anxiety, had lost its only source of light.  The pill made her feel well in a way she had never felt before.  She liked who she was when she was on opioids. She had friends. She felt joy again.  Four years later she tried heroin for the first time because it was so cheaper and more accessible.  Two years later she graduated to injecting.  She’s been to rehab five times with no success. She’s tried methadone and suboxone.  No luck.  She is on Vivitrol now, but as the monthly shot wanes, she always finds her way back to the city.  She injects herself with heroin because it soothes her anxiety and cushions her in a cloud of calm.  She injects cocaine because it makes her feel invincible.

The guy she was with in the hotel room called 911 when he came out of the bathroom and found her unresponsive on the carpet with the two syringes on the...

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 QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE/SHORT SENTENCES

by TheJusticeofthePeace@ 20. Oct. 2010. – 12:52:52

A question and...

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I continue to read the website of the Chief Coroner, where Preventing Future Death (PFD) reports are published and came across the recent notice after the inquest for Mr Anthony Preston, in Essex.  Many PFDs raise similar issues and I’ve written before about what PFDs are and collated many of those which I think are relevant to claims of lessons learned.  I’ve now added the notice for Mr Preston because I think it shows in PFD form issues which haven’t been raised in such notices previously.  My point here is, that they are common dilemmas which are all-too-thankfully not related to deaths.  I’m keen to emphasise this PFD notice precisely because it’s always been obvious they could be and if ’lessons learned claims’ are to be taken seriously, then this report needs notice, in my view.

I encourage you to read the entire notice, not least to see evidence from the Coroner of things I will mention which will surprise you and which you’d be entitled to question if I weren’t showing the source of the claim.  That said, a...

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Worth reflecting on a few issues to do with the return, recall or revocation for those patients who are absent without leave (AWOL) or liable to be detained, under the Mental Health Act 1983.  I’ve had a number of queries, questions and quandaries in that last few weeks so I thought a post on it may help.  This post relates, therefore, to patients who either are or at some point were sectioned in hospital under the MHA and are now outside the hospital in one of several circumstances —

• Some patients may have left the hopsital without authorisation and are AWOL.
• Some may have had such authorisation but have failed to return to hospital on time – and are now also AWOL.
• Some patients may have had such authorisation cut short by service of a notice revoking their s17 leave – and are now AWOL.
• Some patients may have been previously discharged from hospital on a Community Treatment Order and then been recalled from that – and are now AWOL.
• This list is not exhaustive – could do on to add s42 warrants or recall and so on so...
  
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I am sixty-three years old, six foot eight.  I used to be six nine and a half, but life has beaten me down.  Over thirty years in EMS has flattened my spine to the point that some days I can barely feel my legs.  I have no business being back on a basketball court, but I eagerly lace up my new Lou Williams’s size 14s, put on my Washingron Generals tank top and head to the park where I will play a pickup game with men half an even one third my age.  I don’t have a lot going for me except my height.  I am slow, not just in speed, but reaction time.  The youngers have found they can attack me with jukes and jives and I am too slow to block their shots when they come at me, and if I go out to challenge their outside shots, they fake me and drive around me, rising to the rim before I even get turned back toward the basket. My balance has already caused me to fall once chasing a ball, scraping my knee, elbow and shoulder and nearly falling another time except for a helping hand of another player to grab me and stadey...

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“Dopesick” is a new eight-episode series dramatizing the start of the opioid overdose epidemic that originated with Purdue Pharma’s marketing campaign for oxycodone .The series is populated with a fictional cast of characters, including a country doctor (Michael Keaton), a young woman injured in a coal mining accident and her parents who struggle to understand her addiction, an earnest young drug salesman, two US attorneys and a DEA agent (Rosario Dawson) who fight to combat the powerful drug company and Purdue’s bought and paid for allies in the FDA and Congress.  I’ve seen seven of the eight episodes, and I can tell you this is riveting TV that will move, startle and anger you, and I hope by the final episode, inspire you to help change this country’s approach to the epidemic.  The producers and writers did an amazing job taking the facts of the epidemic and turning them into compelling drama that should engage a wide audience.

What Purdue Pharma did was criminal, and it unleashed on this country a...

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One year ago, Victor Osei killed his neighbour Anthony Higgins in a brutal attack.  Having pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, Mr Osei has been given a hospital order “without limit of time”, (presumably, a s37/41 restricted hospital order) and will be detained until such time as his psychiatrist and the Ministry of Justice are satisfied it is appropriate for him to be discharged.  The psychiatrist who gave evidence in the criminal proceedings, Dr Nigel Blackwood, seems to have been keen to stress the supervision which follows discharge after a homicide, noting that it is different to community care which is provided before a patient has seriously offended.  Conditional discharge, as it is known, allows the hospital or MoJ to recall any patient to hospital if there were to be a repeat of non-compliance with medication, for example.

I’m obviously now blogging a lot less frequently than before and trying to avoid individual commentaries on cases where all I have is the same...

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