What’s a ‘Bad Batch’ of Heroin?

By |

This week the Atlantic City Police Department faced a dilemma that’s becoming sadly too familiar: The city of 39,000 saw six deaths from drug overdoses in the span of seven days. On Wednesday, officers responded to six overdose calls between the hours of 4:00 pm and 10:00 pm alone. Two of those overdoses were fatal. The other four people were saved, temporarily at least, by first responders who administered the opioid antagonist Narcan, which blocks opioid receptors and stops the effects on someone overdosing on heroin or heroin-related drugs like OxyContin or hydrocodone. The ACPD took the sensible step of making a public safety announcement that a “potentially bad batch” of heroin was circulating in the Atlantic City area.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

More about: Opium Wars

Heroin and Prescription Opiates: Tell us your Story

By |

We’re interested in talking to people whose lives have been affected by the opioid epidemic here in South Jersey, and we’ve put together a short questionnaire–a few basic questions and a request you tell us your story. We won’t know who you are unless you leave your name (and that’s optional), but we’re hoping this will be a way to start to connect with people who can educate us on this story, so we can cover it responsibly. If your life’s been touched by drug abuse, and you want to talk to us, let us know. And maybe consider sharing with your networks. Thanks,
Route Forty
Loading…

More about: Opium Wars

Trampolines, Equality, Nor’Easter Aftermath – Tuesday’s Roundup

By |

Trampolines
We know you’ve always wanted something else to do with your kids/grandchildren/nieces/nephews around here, particularly when it’s not a beach day. How about a trampoline park? Yes, it’s real – opening in the fall of this year at the Hamilton mall. Route 40 has the story. Equality
You’ve probably read by now Amy Rosenberg’s piece about the Atlantic County freeholder who joked whether the women’s marchers would end “in time for them to cook dinner?”

More about: Roundup

‘Safer’ Oxy Meant More Deaths, Report Finds

By |

In 2010, Purdue Pharma released a new form of their blockbuster pain drug OxyContin that supposed to deter abuse. It was harder to crush up and snort or inject to get high. 

Instead the new-formula Oxy seems to have led a lot of long-term abusers, already deep into the disease, to switch to heroin, and many thousands of them likely died from that drug. This according to a report from the RAND Corporation and the Wharton School. Possibly 80% of the spike in heroin death since 2010 is due to reformulated Oxy, the report’s authors say. The actual RAND/Wharton paper (“Supply-Side Drug Policy in the Presence of Substitutes: Evidence from the Introduction of Abuse-Deterrent Opioids”) is behind a paywall, but you can read Zach Siegel’s story on it here.

More about: Opium Wars

Atlantic City’s Water, Policing and Traffic – MLK Day Roundup

By |

Atlantic City’s Water
Atlantic City’s water authority in May hired a well-known New Jersey-based financial advisor to help it craft a concession plan that could free up some cash for the debt-laden casino resort and stave off a state takeover. Just a few months later, the financial advisor abruptly abandoned its contract with the water authority to begin working with the New Jersey department that would eventually take over Atlantic City. What exactly happened, and what might the state’s insight into the water authority, gleaned through advisor Acacia Financial, mean for its future? Route 40 takes a look here. Policing
Meanwhile, the city’s police will show up for work no matter what happens in talks with the state over cuts to the force or salaries and benefits, PBA president Matt Rogers said, responding to rumors of a strike.

More about: Homepage Featured

Chiesa Cuts Worry Local Legislators, Sweeney’s Latest and Inside ACDevCo – Tuesday’s Roundup

By |

Mazzeo, Whelan Worried By Chiesa Cuts
The governor’s emissary to Atlantic City, Jeffrey Chiesa, would like to cut 101 firefighting jobs from the Atlantic City Fire Department, as part of a commitment to public safety and economic revitalization in the World’s Playground. Cuts to the ACPD are on the horizon as well. This is old news, as we say. The new news is that local representatives Sen. Jim Whelan and Assemblyman Vince Mazzeo, having sponsored the legislation that brough Chiesa and his mighty hatchet to Atlantic City, now possess concerns he may wield that hatchet too frothily. “We must be cognizant of public safety concerns related to a depleted and understaffed public safety department,” they wrote, in a letter to Chiesa, obtained by the Press of Atlantic City.

More about: Roundup

Twilight Zone

By |

 What’s Keeping the South Inlet Empty? In mid-August of last summer a real estate investor from Florida named Bruce Pender bought a small plot of land in the South Inlet neighborhood of Atlantic City. He paid $25,000 to acquire 206 S. Vermont Avenue, tax records show. The old owner, Seaview Property Development of Turnersville, had been sitting on the land since 2005. In real estate terms, this was one of the rarest commodities going: beachfront land about an hour’s drive from Philadelphia—two and a half hours (give or take) from New York City.

More about: Atlantic City, Watchdog Journalism, Atlantic City, beachfront property, CRDA, development, norcross, South Inlet

‘Narcan is Staggeringly Expensive’

By |

The skyrocketing cost of Narcan—the lifesaving opioid antidote used to revive people in overdose—is impacting budgeting decisions for at least one South Jersey police department. Pleasantville Chief Sean Riggin said the cost of a dose of Narcan has increased between 200% and 400% for his department (depending on how you estimate), while at the same time the number of doses the city uses has spiked. “We had to put it in as a line-item in the budget this year,” he said. “Narcan is staggeringly expensive.”

Riggin sat down with Breaking AC and Route 40 yesterday at Gary’s Restaurant in Pleasantville for an interview that covered a range of topics.  

“Our budget is not increasing for next year, and our Narcan cost is, so other things are going to get cut,” he said.

More about: Opium Wars, narcan, opioid epidemic, pleasantville, police

Original Spartans

By |

Dr. John Baker and Dr. Fred Dalzell worked the sidelines of Holy Spirit High School football games for parts of five decades. The prominent South Jersey orthopedic surgeon John Baker likes to talk about the time he met the eminent South Jersey high school football coach Ed Byrnes to talk about becoming the team doctor for the Holy Spirit Spartans. In New Jersey, state law requires high school football teams to have medical staff on-hand in case of injury. At most schools, this is a paid position, but Holy Spirit in the late 1970s was running its program on a shoestring, and Coach Byrnes was looking for volunteers. Baker was a young doctor, recently transplanted to South Jersey from St.

More about: Homepage Featured, Voices, football, high school football, Holy Spirit