Finally

Posted on November 30, 2021 by Pete

How long does it take to implement something that’s proven to work and saves lives?

NYC Safe Injection Sites Open In Landmark Shot To Curb Overdoses

A first-of-its-kind effort in New York City aims to prevent drug users from overdosing and dying in the shadows.

Supervised injection sites will open in Harlem and Washington Heights this week, officials announced.

It’s the first time in the United States these safe havens — also known as “overdose prevention centers” — for people to use heroin and other drugs will open under official approval.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

8 Responses to Finally

  1. darkcycle says:
    December 1, 2021 at 12:51 pm

    Can we do something about this spam?

  2. darkcycle says:
    December 2, 2021 at 1:19 pm

    Goodbye, good riddance, and thanks, Pete. And Happy Chanukah to all my couchmates.

  3. Servetus says:
    December 2, 2021 at 1:46 pm

    Happy holidays couchmates. Drug war reduction and elimination is on a roll. Meanwhile, San Francisco’s mortality rate for ODs remains steady at 2 per day, the highest of any large county in California. More have died from ODs than COVID. City leaders have already spent $13.2 million on OD prevention this year. A supervised injection site is set to open in the spring of 2022. SF Mayor London Breed is confronting the issues to make it work:

    “I’m determined,” Breed said in a brief interview Monday about supervised drug consumption sites. “But it’s more complicated than that. … I have to think about the people whose lives will be impacted if we do it.”

    https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/S-F-working-to-open-supervised-drug-use-site-by-16626514.php

  5. Servetus says:
    December 9, 2021 at 6:57 pm

    Smartwatch for opioid ODs and monitoring:

    9-DEC-2021–…“We have the technology to detect these craving moments and incorporate an intervention to avoid scenarios of drug use,” says Rahman, who focuses on creating mobile, health-related sensors in the MOSAIC Lab he co-directs.

    The tiny, wireless sensor uses machine learning to determine if the psychophysiological signs detected in real time by respiration and electrocardiogram (ECG) are consistent with opioid cravings. Such cravings are one of the primary causes of OUD relapse and fatal overdose following a period of abstinence.

    Once a craving is detected, the sensor alerts the user with mindfulness-based interventions that ultimately could be personalized based on the user’s behaviors and input from their clinician. […]

    The research can be expanded to include other substance use disorders, and the NSF-funded project includes a machine-learning course for clinicians and educational and awareness workshops for middle-school girls.

    Gullapalli notes that the sensor under development could also be used to ensure the proper use of prescribed opioid pain medications and prevent OUD. “The doctor can ask the patient to wear the smartwatch and the system will track how frequently the patient is using the drug, how the patient’s physiology is changing and determine if the patient is developing a dependence on opioids,” explains Gullapalli, who was recently accepted into Yale’s highly selective Innovation to Impact program for entrepreneurship for substance use disorder, funded by National Institute for Drug Abuse. […]

    University of Massachusetts: Smartwatch sensor may help prevent opioid relapse, overdose and dependency–UMass Amherst computer scientist among team awarded $1.1 million grant to advance mobile health research

  6. Servetus says:
    December 14, 2021 at 7:15 pm

    The President of Fiji endorses a hemp economy for his country:

    President Ratu Wiliame Katonivere has joined the list of high-profile individuals calling for the industrialisation of hemp.

    He said the product was proving to be a high-value business and Fiji should not hesitate to tap into it.

    Speaking at the 23rd Attorney-General’s Conference at the InterContinental Fiji Golf Resort and Spa at Natadola yesterday, he said industrial hemp had been called a wonder plant because of its estimated 25,000 different uses, which included food, rope, textiles, paper and building material.

    “These industries give thousands of jobs globally and many countries are finding that industrial hemp offers huge economic potential,” he said.

    “The industrialisation of hemp has far-reaching implications and not only for current government policies and legislation addressing the illegal use and effects of hemp.” […]

    https://www.fijitimes.com/hemp-valuable-business/

  7. Servetus says:
    December 21, 2021 at 5:20 pm

    Congressional representatives voting in favor of prohibition could face a corruption probe using a new computer algorithm developed at the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science and the Faculty of Philosophy, Science and Letters, located at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

    December 21, 2021…After creating a network based on the voting histories of almost 2,500 deputies, the researchers noted that some deputies who had been notoriously convicted of corruption had similar voting histories to those of other deputies. “In this kind of network analysis, each node represents a deputy and each edge stands for the similarity of votes between a pair of deputies,” Colliri explained.

    The researchers detected a pattern in the network. “The pattern showed voting vicinity or similarity among deputies whose convictions had been reported in the media. There was consonance in their voting histories,” he said.

    To validate the finding, they assembled a separate database with data on deputies convicted for corruption taken from sources such as Brazil’s Supreme Court (STF). “With this secondary database, we verified 33 individuals who had been convicted, and they were not scattered but clustered in the network,” Colliri said. “They formed a pattern of what we call ‘corruption neighbors’. We then tested this map using a number of link prediction algorithms based on common neighbors. The algorithms proved capable of predicting whether a deputy is corrupt with 90% accuracy.”

    One of the conclusions to be drawn from the study is that corruption in Congress can be monitored in a simpler manner. “We discovered that corrupt deputies vote similarly in our Congress, so that a predictive model can be obtained more simply and monitoring can be much easier to do. It’s far more straightforward to analyze this data than search among lawsuits, criminal trials, media reports, and even family trees,” Zhao said. […]

    Agencia Fapest: Predicting Corruption Convictions Among Brazilian Representatives Through a Voting-History Based Network

    Corruption Networks (paywall):

    https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-81484-7_4

Comments are closed.