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Trump administration to seek stiffer penalties against drug dealers, reduce opioid prescribing

March 19, 2018 by  
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The Trump administration said it will seek stiffer penalties against drug dealers — including the death penalty where appropriate under current law — and it wants the number of prescriptions for powerful painkillers to be cut by one-third nationwide as part of a broad effort to combat the opioid crisis.

Administration officials said Sunday that the measures are part of a three-pronged approach to fighting the opioid epidemic, which killed tens of thousands of people in 2016. The White House said it aims to reduce the demand for opioids by slowing overprescribing, cutting off the supply of illicit drugs and helping those who are addicted.

“The opioid crisis is viewed by us at the White House as a nonpartisan problem searching for a bipartisan solution,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said.

The White House said it wants people who deal fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that has caused deaths to skyrocket nationwide, to be prosecuted more aggressively. The administration had considered making trafficking large quantities of fentanyl a capital crime, because tiny amounts can kill many people, but it said Sunday that the Justice Department will seek capital punishment for drug traffickers under current federal law.

The law allows for the death penalty to be applied in four types of drug-related cases, according to the Death Penalty Information Center: murder committed during a drug-related drive-by shooting, murder committed with the use of a firearm during a drug-trafficking crime, murder related to drug trafficking and murder of a law enforcement officer that relates to drugs.

The administration is looking for new ways to crack down on fentanyl traffickers, calling for Congress to reduce the threshold needed to impose mandatory-minimum sentences on people who are convicted of dealing fentanyl and other powerful opioids that can kill people in trace amounts. It also is calling for a more aggressive policing of the Internet, where fentanyl is often purchased, and mail, where it is shipped from countries including China.

The administration’s increased focus on additional punitive measures has alarmed some who say states and municipalities have already increased arrests and prosecutions.

“The idea that we can ratchet up punishment and penalties of various sorts to address the supply is based on exactly zero evidence of the probability that this will work,” said Leo Beletsky, a professor of law and health sciences at Northeastern University.

The White House wants to sharply reduce the number of painkillers that are prescribed nationwide, aiming to slash opioid prescriptions by one-third over three years. It also wants to tighten the number of opioid prescriptions that can be reimbursed by Medicaid as a way to curb overprescribing.

In addition, the administration wants to create a national prescription-drug monitoring system so suspicious prescriptions can be flagged. Each state operates its own, and a few states have data-sharing agreements.

The administration wants to test all federal inmates for opioid addiction and provide options for treatment when inmates complete their sentences and reenter society.

The plan also calls for putting more naloxone, a drug that can reverse opioid overdoses, in the hands of more first responders. Municipalities have been struggling to pay for the drug, and fentanyl and other powerful opioids have meant that first responders must use more of it to reverse overdoses.

The administration also wants to expand the use of medicated assisted treatment, where those who are addicted to opioids are given medication under a doctor’s supervision that helps them wean off the drugs.

Several U.S. cities have said they want to open the nation’s first facilities where people are allowed to consume drugs under medical supervision, which is illegal under federal law. The White House said it does not support such facilities because they have not seen “clear and convincing evidence” that they work.

President Trump declared the opioid crisis a nationwide public health emergency, a designation that still stands. Many of the policies announced Sunday stem from a commission Trump ­convened last year. It released its recommendations in November. It is unclear how the proposals will be funded. The administration said it is negotiating with Congress on specific allocations.

Bertha K. Madras, a professor of psychobiology at Harvard Medical School and member of the president’s commission, said she is happy with the White House’s recommendations. She says that reducing the opioid supply by a third will give a tangible benchmark and that a national prescription-drug monitoring program can help reduce overprescribing. “I’m very optimistic and happy,” she said.

The administration’s proposals come amid a flurry of activity on opioids in Washington. The acting head of the Drug Enforcement Administration will testify before Congress on Tuesday about how the agency has handled the opioid epidemic, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee will consider 25 ­opioid-related bills.

Trump is scheduled to outline his plan during a speech Monday at Manchester Community College in New Hampshire. The state has one of the highest fentanyl overdose rates in the country.

His visit is expected to include a stop by the Manchester Central Fire Station, which is part of a Safe Station initiative to offer the city’s firehouses as safe places for drug users who don’t know where else to turn. When a person enters a fire station, vital signs are checked and, if necessary, the individual is sent to a hospital. If in stable condition, the person is connected with recovery and support services. The program has helped more than 3,000 people since it began in May 2016. It is being overhauled, however, because the treatment facility the city partnered with closed because it was in financial straits.

First lady Melania Trump and Conway, who has played a pivotal role in developing the administration’s approach to the opioid crisis, are among those scheduled to accompany the president.

The visit will be Trump’s first to New Hampshire — home of the nation’s first presidential primaries — since his election in 2016. But a senior administration official told reporters the trip is unrelated to Trump’s reelection plans.

Rather, the official said, Trump is coming to the Granite State — which he called a “drug-infested den” during a phone call with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto last year — because it has been among the hardest hit by the opioid crisis. The official also noted that Democratic officeholders have been invited to participate in Trump’s visit.

John Wagner in New Hampshire contributed to this report.

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Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Under Pressure Over Data Breach

March 19, 2018 by  
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Government officials in the U.S. and Europe are demanding answers from Facebook Inc. after reports that Cambridge Analytica, the advertising-data firm that helped Donald Trump win the U.S. presidency, retained information on tens of millions of Facebook users without their consent.

Over the weekend, entreaties for the social-media giant to take responsibility evolved into calls for Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg to appear in front of lawmakers. Facebook has already testified about how its platform was used by Russian propagandists ahead of the 2016 election, but the company never put Zuckerberg himself in the spotlight with government leaders. The pressure may also foreshadow tougher regulation for the social network.

“It’s clear these platforms can’t police themselves,’’ Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, said Saturday on Twitter. “They say ‘trust us.’ Mark Zuckerberg needs to testify before Senate Judiciary.’’ Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey also separately launched an investigation.

The company on Friday said that a professor used Facebook’s log-in tools to get people to sign up for what he claimed was a personality-analysis app he had designed for academic purposes. To take the quiz, 270,000 people gave the app permission to access data via Facebook on themselves and their friends, exposing a network of 50 million people, according to the New York Times. That kind of access was allowed per Facebook’s rules at the time. Afterward, the professor violated Facebook’s terms when he passed along that data to Cambridge Analytica.

reviewing another; they were co-directors at Global Science Research, the company that obtained the information and passed it on to Cambridge.

The denials and refutations did little to ease the criticism. Damian Collins, a British lawmaker, said Sunday that Zuckerberg or another senior executive should appear in front of his committee because previous witnesses have avoided difficult questions, creating “a false reassurance that Facebook’s stated policies are always robust and effectively policed.’’

The next few weeks represent a critical time for Facebook to reassure users and regulators about its content standards and platform security, to prevent rules that could impact its main advertising business, according to Daniel Ives, an analyst at GBH Insights.

“Changes to their business model around advertising and news feeds/content could be in store over the next 12 to 18 months,’’ Ives wrote in a note to investors.

Facebook, meanwhile, has sought to explain that the mishandling of user data was out of its hands and doesn’t constitute a “breach” – a definition that would require the company to alert users about whether their information was taken, per U.S. Federal Trade Commission rules.

Menlo Park, California-based Facebook no longer allows app developers to ask for access to data on users’ friends. But the improper handling of the data raises systemic questions about how much companies can be trusted to protect personal information, said Nuala O’Connor, president and CEO of the Center for Democracy Technology.

“While the misuse of data is not new, what we now see is how seemingly insignificant information about individuals can be used to decide what information they see and influence viewpoints in profound ways,’’ O’Connor said in a statement. “Communications technologies have become an essential part of our daily lives, but if we are unable to have control of our data, these technologies control us. For our democracy to thrive, this cannot continue.’’

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