Opioids

The year was 1908 and an Ohio doctor, appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt as the nation's first Opium Commissioner, warned that Americans "have become the greatest drug fiends in the world." If the sentiment seems all too familiar in the grips of our current opioid epidemic, you'll find there are many similarities, and some shocking differences, between current times and a drug crisis that dates all the way back to the Civil War.

Hamilton County's leaders aren't counting on help from the state to build an opioid diversion center. Commissioners passed a motion directing the administration to look into building such a facility.

A former Cincinnati mayor makes an endorsement in the upcoming mayoral race and city council candidates are raising money for their campaigns. Communities continue to seek solutions to the opioid crisis, Northern Kentucky University settles a sexual assault case and a dispute erupts over the removal of a local Confederate memorial. And it has been a tumultuous week for Macy's.

Boone and Kenton counties plan to sue three of the country's largest wholesale drug distributors. Fiscal courts in both counties say AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson Corporation are a big reason for Northern Kentucky's opioid epidemic.

More than a year ago, 80-year old Helen Douglass described her shoulder and forearm pain following a stroke as nine out of 10. Last summer the Cleveland-area resident participated in a clinical trial for SPRINT, a small wearable stimulator patch and has no pain now.

Her story is one of many SPR Therapeutics points to and the Ohio company is now marketing the FDA approved portable device that delivers neuro-stimulation to the nerve causing the pain. CEO Maria Bennett says SPRINT is somewhere between TENS and a fully implantable stimulation device.

Some medical scientists believe the patch could become a substitute for opioid abuse. 

Local organization Impact Changes Society is teaming with documentarian Jerry Buck to get his latest film, The War We Ignore, about the growing opioid epidemic, into schools this fall. 

Each Friday on Cincinnati Edition we review and discuss the people, stories and events that are affecting the Tri-state.

The continuing opioid crisis in our region moved Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine to file a lawsuit against five major prescription drug manufacturers Wednesday.

Ohio's Attorney General issued a warning late last week about a new mixture of opiates causing overdoses. Mike DeWine says "gray death" is a mixture of fentanyl, heroin, and the synthetic drug U47700.

Local emergency medical services (EMS) have been taxed by the continuing opioid crisis in our region. During one six-day period last summer in Cincinnati, there were 174 overdoses. 

Daily stories of overdoses, deaths and efforts to reduce opioid addiction have made us all too aware of the continuing drug crisis taking place in Greater Cincinnati. 

The number of babies born drug dependent continues to increase. In Greater Cincinnati and elsewhere neonatologists are looking for answers.

Cincinnati Union Bethel's Off The Streets program has been helping women involved in prostitution and sex trafficking for a decade. 

In just one week this summer, there were more than 175 heroin overdoses reported in the Cincinnati area. 

As the heroin crisis continues across the country and here in Greater Cincinnati, news and media organizations have been trying to explore and expose the many aspects of drug abuse, the individuals fighting addiction and community response to the epidemic.

In the past three weeks, there have been nearly 300 overdoses and three deaths from heroin in the Cincinnati area. These are unprecedented numbers and the situation is nothing short of a public health emergency.