Both nationally and in Colorado, opioid use disorders have emerged as a significant public health concern. While prescription opioids can help people manage their pain, they also come with serious risks and potential complications. Prescription opioids should be prescribed and used carefully. These drugs are chemically similar to heroin and can increase the risk of addiction or overdose, even if taken as prescribed. This report summarizes fatal overdose...

This profile summarizes controlled substance prescriptions that Colorado residents received from 2014-2016, prescribing practices and patient behaviors, population-level health care encounters and deaths related to opioid overdose among Colorado residents. This information is from several sources: The Colorado Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP), emergency department visit and hospital discharge databases and death certificates.

The teenage son of an Appalachian single mother who dies when he is eleven uses his good looks, wit, and instincts to survive foster care, child labor, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival....

Bailit Health conducted an extensive literature review, examining study findings on the efficacy of acupuncture, chiropractic care, and massage therapy for individuals with long term physical disabilities, with a special focus on evidence to support the Department's future decision making related to the provision of these services. This report also investigates the efficacy of these therapies for the treatment of pain, in order to inform the Department's...

Presents the story of tobacco, its history, its role in culture, and its dangers. Also explains the power of tobacco over smokers and chewers, how cigarette makers help increase its hold--and make it more difficult to live without it, and offers suggestions on how to kick the tobacco habit and reverse its ill effects.

Examines the history of drug addiction treatment, discussing drug addiction and the possible philosophies of treatment options available for addicts.

When fifteen-year-old Lance Covington finds an abandoned baby in the backseat of a car, he knows she's the newborn daughter of a meth addict he's been trying to help. But when the police arrest him for kidnapping, Lance is thrust into a criminal world of baby trafficking and drug abuse. His mother, Barbara, looks for help from Kent Harlan - the man whom she secretly loves and who once helped rescue her daughter from a mess of her own. Kent flies to...

Journalist Sam Quinones chronicles how, over the past 15 years, enterprising sugar cane farmers in a small county on the west coast of Mexico created a unique distribution system that brought black tar heroin -- the cheapest, most addictive form of the opiate, 2 to 3 times purer than its white powder cousin -- to the veins of people across the United States. Communities where heroin had never been seen before -- from Charlotte, North Carolina and...