‘I Continue To Go To Funerals’: Heroin Crisis Besets Ventura County
The county's rate of incidence for both deaths and emergency room overdoses far outpace the rate across California. "There are no racial boundaries. There are no financial boundaries. There are no geographic boundaries," said Joseph May, deputy chief of police in Simi Valley.
Ventura County Star:
Heroin Tightens Deadly Grip On County
Overdoses involving heroin killed 33 people in Ventura County last year, the fatalities rising after two years of decline in a trend experts say shows the hammerlock the drug holds on communities as different as Oxnard and Simi Valley. ... Two sets of data from the Ventura County Medical Examiner's Office showed deaths involving heroin overdoses — in some cases paired with other drugs — descended from 43 in 2012 to 23 in 2014. But fatalities climbed in 2015 with 12 deaths in the city of Ventura alone. The frequency of deaths in the county, according to nine years of data from the California Department of Public Health, has consistently surpassed the fatality rate across California. Many observers link the heroin problem to the county and nationwide epidemic of painkiller abuse, contending that people who are addicted to prescription meds eventually turn to heroin. (Kisken, 11/26)
In other public health news —
Los Angeles Times:
Air Pollution Hot Spot In Paramount Spurs Calls For Action On Metal Factory Emissions
Residents of this small, working-class city southeast of Los Angeles have for years watched regulators launch studies and promise stricter rules to protect homes and schools from toxic emissions from the array of metal-processing facilities operating in their midst. But they have seen little action. Then, a few weeks ago, air quality monitoring detected high levels of a potent, cancer-causing metal in Paramount, forcing authorities to pay attention.Now, what had been a slow-moving effort targeting one metal-forging plant has snowballed into a broad investigation, with teams of inspectors from several agencies fanning out to at least 20 facilities in the city’s industrial spine, searching for the origin of the toxic hot spot. (Barboza, 11/25)
Sacramento Bee:
Stem Cell Clinics Offer Unproven Treatments Around California
In the last few years, more than 570 stem cell clinics have popped up nationwide, advertising treatment for a range of maladies, from autism and Alzheimer’s to neuropathy and Parkinson’s disease, according to a recent UC Davis study. About 113 of those are operating in California.But do they really work? According to most stem cell experts and the federal government, there’s no way to know yet. (Buck, 11/26)