Fentanyl can hide. But cheap paper tests, increasingly available at the Bay Area’s social hotspots and universities, are finding it. In a desperate race to reduce poisonings caused by pills or powders that are unknowingly tainted by fentanyl, advocates are distributing free tests that can quickly detect even tiny traces of the deadly synthetic opioid. … Read more
Santa Clara County’s child welfare agency is once again mired in a contentious blame game, as social workers say department leaders are scapegoating an attorney for a controversial practice that the county recently abandoned: inviting parents to attend child abuse interviews, even when the parent is the one suspected of abuse. The attorney, Bhavit Madhvani, … Read more
Customs and Border Protection officers currently face a nearly impossible task: stopping the constant flow of fentanyl and other drugs into the U.S. via the southern border. CBP seized 43,000 pounds of the stuff last year, half of which came from just one border crossing — Mariposa Port of Entry in Nogales, Arizona. To help them … Read more
By Karen Breslau | Bloomberg The University of California Law School in San Francisco asked a federal judge to order its home city to do more to end illegal drug use and reduce tent encampments around its downtown campus in the Tenderloin district. The university first sued San Francisco in 2020 and reached a settlement … Read more
Gavin Kelly hugs his mother Amanda inside the tent they live in. | Jordan Gale When photographer Jordan Gale moved to Portland a few years back, Oregon had just passed Measure 110 — the first-ever U.S. drug decriminalization law — and he wanted to explore the topic with his camera. Warning: The photos below contain … Read more
Dozens of students gathered in Saratoga High School’s student center on Feb. 28 to participate in emergency lifesaving training. Unlike similar efforts in the past, the training wasn’t centered around chest compressions or mouth-to-mouth resuscitation but on how to save someone from an opioid overdose. The event was part of an effort the Los Gatos … Read more
Sam Ogozalek, Tampa Bay Times | KFF Health News (TNS) TREASURE ISLAND, Fla. — Andrew McClave Jr. loved to lift weights. The 6-foot-4-inch bartender resembled a bodybuilder and once posed for a photo flexing his muscles with former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan. “He was extremely dedicated to it,” said his father, Andrew McClave Sr., “to … Read more
SAN JOSE — A defense lawyer suggested in court Wednesday that David Castro’s infant daughter Phoenix died of accidental smothering while sleeping on the couch with her father, not from a fentanyl overdose. But a Santa Clara County coroner who conducted the autopsy and found methamphetamine and fentanyl in the 3-month-old baby’s system vehemently disagreed. … Read more
Colleen DeGuzman | (TNS) KFF Health News The United States is knee-deep in what some experts call the opioid epidemic’s “fourth wave,” which is not only placing drug users at greater risk but is also complicating efforts to address the nation’s drug problem. These waves, according to a report out this week from Millennium Health, began … Read more
SAN FRANCISCO — Federal prosecutors have filed charges against a man who was allegedly caught with 2.5 pounds of fentanyl during a traffic stop in Oakland, and whom authorities linked to a raid where 54 pounds of the deadly drug were seized, court records show. Darwin Licona, 29, was indicted this month on charges of … Read more