Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Opioid Use Disorder Costs Hospitals $95 Billion A Year
The addiction crisis is increasingly eroding health systems' finances, with the treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD) costing hospitals more than $95 billion a year, new data from Premier Inc. AI Applied Sciences shows. That's 7.86% of all hospital expenditures, according to the data, which was released first to Axios. (Goldman, 1/24)
Kentucky communities can apply for certification through a program that evaluates the services being offered to residents seeking help for drug or alcohol addiction, Gov. Andy Beshear said. The governor announced the creation of the Recovery Ready Communities program last year. (1/24)
A new threat has emerged in the United States' illicit drug supply: an animal tranquilizer called聽xylazine. The drug is showing up in synthetic opioids, particularly fentanyl, leading to more overdoses and alarming side effects, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control.聽(Rodriguez, 1/24)
On marijuana and mushrooms 鈥
Medical workers in Illinois are warning adults to keep marijuana edibles away from kids, after an 鈥渁larming鈥 jump in the number of accidental consumptions. The number of exposures to edible cannabis among children 5 and younger from 2017-2021 reported in Illinois increased from 5 to 232 cases 鈥 a 4,500% increase. Most of the increase was during the pandemic years of 2020-2021. Illinois legalized recreational marijuana in 2020. (McCoppin, 1/23)
In advance of a late-Friday deadline for filing bills, state legislators last week submitted dozens of marijuana-related measures, including proposals to ban employers from firing workers over flunked THC tests, make it easier to wipe away old marijuana-related criminal charges, and require licensed cannabis facilities to allow workers to vote on unionizing. (Adams, 1/23)
Arizona would spend $30 million to research psychedelic mushrooms as a treatment for a host of medical conditions under a bipartisan proposal at the state Capitol. House Bill 2486 is groundbreaking not only because it would allow for such research, but also because it would lead to peer-reviewed research on the effects of natural psilocybin mushrooms, rather than a synthetic version of the drug commonly used in such studies. (Randazzo, 1/23)
