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Drug overdose deaths have increased by 33 percent in the past five years across the country, with some states seeing jumps of nearly 200 percent. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 30 states saw increases in overdose deaths resulting from the abuse of heroin and prescription painkillers, a class of drugs known as opioids. New Hampshire saw a 191 percent increase while North Dakota, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maine had death rates jump by over 100 percent. …

A BBC chief insists she is 'proud' of the controversial programme targeting children as young as six about a schoolboy who takes sex-change drugs. Children's director Alice Webb defended Just A Girl after parents reacted angrily to the CBBC show, which depicts an 11-year-old's struggle to get hormones that stunt puberty, making it easier to have sex-change surgery in the future. Concerned campaigners said it could 'sow the seeds of confusion' in young minds. But Ms Webb said the BBC has a duty 'to make sure that we are stimulating conversation'.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union released a report on Wednesday in support of the effort to stop drug arrests and convictions for the personal use of all drugs, citing the harm it does to people, including non-citizens, who might face deportation. “The consequences of a conviction can mean that individuals and sometimes whole families are excluded from public benefits such as food stamps, housing, wages and job opportunities and even the voting booth next month,” Tess Borden, Aryeh Neier Fellow at both liberal organizations and author of the report, said at a press conference at the...

A 7-year-old girl in McKeesport, Pennsylvania got on the bus and went to school as normal Monday morning, but on the way home she told her bus driver she hadn’t been able to wake her parents. The bus driver alerted police who responded to the home. From the Washington Post: Inside the home, authorities found the bodies of Christopher Dilly, 26, and Jessica Lally, 25, dead of suspected drug overdoses, according to police.Also inside the home were three other children — 5, 3 and nine months old. Courney Lally, the deceased woman’s sister, had tried to alert authorities to the...

Nearly every 12 minutes, someone in the U.S. dies of a drug overdose. People in communities across America are abusing both prescription pain killers and heroin. It is an epidemic. No one is immune; it is a sad reality that is playing out across the country, including in my own district in Southwest Michigan. There were 13 suspected overdoses in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the first quarter of 2013, up from 9 in the first quarter of 2012. Behind these numbers are real folks, and their families, suffering. In 2008, we lost Amy Bousfield, an 18 year-old graduate of Portage Central...

Police found Brian Knighton’s unresponsive body in a Linthicum, Md., McDonald’s bathroom Professional wrestler Axl Rotten — real name Brian Knighton — died earlier this month from a heroin overdose, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore told TheWrap on Wednesday. Police had suspected heroin use, due to the discovery of a “brownish” substance in an unmarked pill bottle found alongside Knighton’s unconscious and unresponsive body in a Linthicum, Md., McDonald’s bathroom. Additionally, Knighton had placed drug paraphernalia and a broken burnt tablespoon with a “crystalline residue” on the restroom’s infant changing table. Knighton was pronounced dead at...

The Department of Veterans Affairs seems unwilling to fire its employees, regardless of outlandish conduct. A new investigation has turned up instances in which employees had sex at work or slept in patient rooms only to receive mild reprimands. This misconduct occurred in hospital facilities spread out among West Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. Three facilities, one in each region, disciplined, but did not fire, a total of 300 employees, according to a Freedom of Information Act request by NBC4 Washington. In one case at the Martinsburg facility in West Virginia, employees actually had sex at the center....

(CNN)—An actress best known for "Star Trek: Voyager" was arrested on September 3. Jennifer Lien, who played Kes in the first few seasons of the "Star Trek" spinoff series, has been charged with indecent exposure. According to CNN affiliate WATE, Lien was arrested in her home in Harriman, Tennessee. Neighbor Carey Smith told WATE that Lien came by her home to comment on how Smith's children were being raised and started using vulgar language. "All of a sudden, here come the shirt up," said Smith. "She started flashing and, 'Woo hoo,' and I said, 'And what respect is that for...

A new Norwegian study has shown that alcohol and drug abuse is much more common among patients suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression than in the population at large. The study, conducted by the Norwegian Institute for Public Health, looked into the extent of drug and alcohol dependence among Norwegians diagnosed with serious mental health disorders. Every fourth patient with schizophrenia and every fifth with bipolar disorder also suffered problems with substance abuse.  One in ten people who were severely depressed also had problems with alcohol or drug-related health problems.  It is estimated that one in forty Norwegians indulge...

Iran is breaking bad. Officials say methamphetamine production and abuse of hard drugs are skyrocketing in the country despite potentially lethal criminal penalties for users if they are caught. The increase is partly because of Iran’s status as the gateway for the region’s top drug exporter, Afghanistan—and partly because Iranian dealers are profiting so handsomely from sales to overstressed students and exhausted double-jobbers. Ghazal Tolouian, a psychologist who treats dozens of meth addicts at a therapy camp in a mountain village northwest of Tehran, says most of her clients fall into two categories: students “who want to pass university entrance...

FLORENCE, Ky. – Briana and Kaitlyn Himes said they feel lucky they're not planning a funeral for their parents after five adults overdosed on heroin at their parents' mobile home Saturday. While the adults got high and passed out, three children they were supposed to be caring for – ages 1, 11 and 12 - were in the house with them, according to a Boone County deputy's report. The Himes sisters said the adults might have died if their uncle, Michael Young, hadn't arrived just in time to save them.

The federal government is on the brink of lifting restrictions put in place more than three decades ago when regulators, alarmed by the spread of the virus that causes AIDS, barred men who had sex with other men from donating blood. A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel will begin a two-day meeting on the issue Tuesday, amid growing calls from medical groups, gay rights activists and lawmakers to jettison the ban as outdated and discriminatory.

Nothing fancy, but it makes for a good sticker...

Stricter rules for the country's most commonly prescribed painkiller were rolled out on Thursday by the FDA, the last step in a policy change that has been coming down the pipeline for years, The New York Times reported on Sunday. Hydrocodone will now be in a more serious and restrictive category. Doctors will be barred from calling in prescriptions by telephone, and patients will not be able to get refills on the same prescription, but will have to return to a physician for a new one. It will also have be to kept in special vaults in pharmacies. The Drug...

Oscar-winning actor and comedian Robin Williams has died at age 63, according to police in Marin County, Calif. The full statement is below. On August 11, 2014, at approximately 11:55 a.m, Marin County Communications received a 9-1-1 telephone call reporting a male adult had been located unconscious and not breathing inside his residence in unincorporated Tiburon, CA. The Sheriff’s Office, as well as the Tiburon Fire Department and Southern Marin Fire Protection District were dispatched to the incident with emergency personnel arriving on scene at 12:00 pm. The male subject, pronounced deceased at 12:02 pm has been identified as Robin...

It looks like Mississippi is taking the right steps to reducing fraud when it comes to government assistance. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) will now require new applicants to submit a questionnaire that will evaluate the likelihood of substance abuse. Residents who apply for this temporary assistance from the state will have to submit to drug testing if the state deems they are likely substance abusers from this questionnaire. Testing positive once would require a TANF recipient to undergo treatment for substance abuse. For testing positive a second time, the recipient would be kicked out of the program for...

A drug treatment center in Vancouver, Canada has installed a crack pipe vending machine at its facility — going retail in an effort to reach hardcore addicts and keep them off the streets. The bright, polka-dotted machine dispenses crack pipes like candy or snacks: Each glass pipe costs a quarter, and rolls off a spindle into a tray. A sign on the machine says simply, “Pipes 25¢” About all that’s missing is a picture of Toronto’s crack-smoking mayor, Rob Ford.

(CNN) -- Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman has been found dead of an apparent drug overdose in his Manhattan apartment, law enforcement sources said Sunday. Hoffman, 46, was found in the bathroom of the fourth-floor apartment, the sources told CNN.

A spokesman for U.S. Rep. Trey Radel of Florida says the congressman will resign after pleading guilty to cocaine-possession charges last year. Dave Natonski says the freshman republican will step down Monday and will send a letter to House Speaker John Boehner. Politico first reported the upcoming resignation. On Nov. 20, Radel pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of cocaine possession and was sentenced to a year of probation. He admitted to purchasing 3.5 grams of cocaine from an undercover officer Oct. 29 in Washington. Several GOP leaders had asked him to resign. But Radel had pledged to stay in...

Emonie "Star" Beasley-Brown lived just three weeks before she was suffocated. Her grandmother was accused of placing her hands over the infant's mouth to hush her crying as the 14-year-old mother stood by. Clayton Condiff, four months old, died after being dropped, shaken and suffocated. And three days later — during a year of record child deaths from abuse and neglect in Illinois — two-month-old Julia Duda drowned in a bathtub. Police said the mother left her baby alone while she made coffee, records show. The three infants as well as a fourth battered child died in Chicago during one...