Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Meets to Discuss the Danger of Fake Prescription Medication

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) met Monday morning to discuss the dangers of drug addiction and counterfeit medication. Director David Rausch said in the meeting, “let me be clear, if you’re buying pills on the street, in our state, you’re gambling.” Rausch gave a presentation showing examples of drugs like oxycodone, and compared them to the fake pills that people have been dying from. Most fake prescription pills contain fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. In 2017, fentanyl had attributed to 59 percent of drug overdose deaths. In 2019, Tennessee lost over two thousand people to drug overdoses, and of those over a thousand were fentanyl related. 

Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Commissioner Marie Williams said, “Our state doesn’t just have a counterfeit pill problem, or an opioid problem, or a methamphetamine problem, we have an addiction problem. Just like every other state in this country.”

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Data Shows Pandemic Contributing to Opioid Crisis, Local Health Experts Report ‘More Relapses’

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has contributed to rising drug-related deaths and the ever-worsening opioid crisis in the United States, according to health officials said local data.

Individuals battling opioid addiction have experienced increased stress due to isolation during the pandemic, according to health experts and data collected by the Wall Street Journal reported. Roughly 13% of American adults surveyed in June said they had started or increased drug use, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study.

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New Info About Opioid-Profiteering Family Pushes Largest Museum in US to Rethink Gift Acceptance Policies

by Evie Fordham   The Metropolitan Museum of Art is reviewing its gift acceptance policies after information that members of a prominent donor family headed a deceit campaign to push the highly addictive prescription opioid OxyContin, The Met told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Other New York City art museums that have taken money from the Sackler family, which owns Purdue Pharma, refused to comment on the Tuesday court filing with documents showing members of the Sackler family covered up information about the dangers of OxyContin. “The Sackler family has been connected with The Met for more than a half century. The family is a large extended group and their support of The Met began decades before the opioid crisis. The Met is currently engaging in a further review of our detailed gift acceptance policies, and we will have more to report in due course,” Daniel H. Weiss, president and CEO of The Met, told TheDCNF in a statement Thursday. An employee at The Met told TheDCNF news about the Sackler family is what prompted the institution to review its policy, although the employee would not detail any review timeline. Sackler family members gave a whopping $20 million to the…

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