May 10 Webinar: Crisis in America: Fake Pills and Fentanyl

Join us for a free webinar sponsored by the University of Maryland Department of Psychiatry UMMC EAP Programs. The webinar includes 1 CEU for Social Workers and Counselors.

Tuesday May 10, 2022
2am–3pm

2021 US Overdose Deaths

• over 100,000 deaths
• 60% attributed to Fentanyl

Start of the Opioid Epidemic

In 2000 pharmaceutical companies began heavily marketing new opioid formulations as safe, and the FDA expanded indications from “acute only” to “safe for acute and chronic pain.” Over the next 10 years, prescriptions, opioid deaths and people entering treatment quadrupled.

This webinar will provide tools to:

• Identify the three phases of the current opioid epidemic
• Become aware of forms of fentanyl—fake pills; fentanyl powder; additives to cocaine, meth, ecstasy (MDMA) and heroin and their consequences
• Learn about emerging drug trends—Adderall laced with meth and synthetic nicotine vaping
• Institute effective countermeasures to prevent opioid morbidity and mortality

Fentanyl is now routinely found as an unexpected contaminant, increasingly present in “fake” pain and sedative pills and can be lethal at very low dosages. Overdose deaths in ages 10–19 are rising faster than in any other age group. Even though most drug use rates among adolescents have been trending downward over the past 10 years, emotional distress rates and suicides have been rising, making this a most vulnerable population.

Join us to become educated about current drug trends and how to provide effective self-care and stress control strategies to protect adults and the vulnerable 10–19-year-old population.

Presenter: David R. McDuff, MD

Dr. McDuff is an addiction and sports psychiatrist and a retired Army Colonel. He is a UMSOM Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and the founding Director of its Division of Addiction Research and Treatment and Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship Program. He is the author of Sports Psychiatry: Strategies for Life Balance & Peak Performance and a member of the International Olympic Committee’s Mental Health Working Group for Elite Athletes. He was recently appointed to the Advisory Council of the National Fentanyl Awareness Day. fentanylawarenessday.org

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