In This Issue:

• Opioid crisis plagues privately insured
• Going to the MAT: Recovery community taking different approaches
• Elephant sedative emerges as new threat in overdose battle
• One minute of secondhand marijuana smoke impairs blood vessel function

More than 150 presentation proposals are under consideration for the 2017 Rx Summit

The deadline to submit presentation proposals for the 6^th Annual National Rx Drug Abuse Summit has now passed.

Our team has received more than 150 ideas, and the Rx Summit National Advisory Board is now reviewing the proposals to identify as many as 10 Educational Tracks and additional Pre-Summit Workshops offered at the upcoming conference.

Registrations being taken for 2017 Summit

Registration is now being accepted for the 6th Annual National Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit, to be held April 17-20, 2017, at The Westin Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta, Georgia.

A new study that analyzed claims from a large database of employer-sponsored health insurance plans found a striking 3,000% increase in opioid dependence between 2007 and 2014. It’s yet more evidence of the opioid crisis and its prevalence in middle-class demographic groups. FAIR Health, an independent, not-for-profit organization that manages the bank of insurer data, discovered steep growth trends in opioid-related diagnoses and overdose incidents. Data analysis also revealed what many in the behavioral health specialty already know instinctively: Opioid dependence is especially prevalent among 19- to 35-year-olds.

For those working daily to treat addiction tied to the opioid epidemic in the Ohio Valley, resources have been limited. Beginning this week (August 8) doctors will have a little more to work with. The federal government will allow doctors to treat more patients with buprenorphine, a medication that can help ease people away from addiction. While the science supports this treatment, some remain skeptical. Visits to three treatment centers in the region show the different approaches people in the recovery community are taking. In the fight against the addiction crisis, it appears there is no single silver bullet.

A drug used to sedate elephants and other large animals, 100 times as potent as the fentanyl already escalating the country's heroin troubles, is suspected in spates of overdoses in several states, where authorities say they've found it mixed with or passed off as heroin. The appearance of carfentanil, one of the most potent opioids known to investigators, adds another twist to the fight against painkillers in a country already awash in heroin and fentanyl cases.

A new study finds that you do not have to use marijuana to experience its negative health implications; inhaling secondhand marijuana smoke for just 1 minute may temporarily impair blood vessel function. What is more, researchers found that it may take three times as long for blood vessel function to recover after inhalation of secondhand marijuana smoke, compared with inhalation of secondhand tobacco smoke. Senior author Matthew Springer, PhD, professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology at the University of California-San Francisco, and colleagues report their findings in the Journal of the American Heart Association.