Feb. 1, 2012
- Sales of oxycodone from doctors’ offices and pain clinics in Florida dropped 97 percent from 2010 to 2011, according to Drug Enforcement Administration data and reported by the Miami Herald. Florida doctors and clinics sold almost 46 million oxycodone tablets in 2010, but only 1.2 million pills were sold by doctors last year, the DEA data shows. New legislation passed last year that largely prevents doctors from dispensing oxycodone and other narcotics from their offices, according to the Miami Herald.
- The Courier-Journal is reporting on the trials of two men accused of killing a Lexington hairstylist last seen in late 2009. Jeffery Mundt and Joseph Banis are charged with killing James Carroll, then burying his body in the basement of a home in Old Louisville. They are blaming each other in the killing.
- The experience of Kentucky's Sen. Rand Paul at the airport in Nashville has become part of the debate about the accuracy of equipment used by the Transportation Safety Administration at airports, reports The Tennessean. Paul was attempting to board a flight to Washington, D.C., was stopped at the gate and he refused the pat-down. According to The Tennessean, "the machines’ effectiveness has been called into question because of varying studies on the rate they return false positives and how sensitive the machines can be, sometimes picking up sweat or certain types of clothing as a positive hit."
- The Globe and Mail reports on efforts to use tobacco as a drug to treat cancer. Tobacco plants have been genetically altered to create a drug comparable to Herceptin that could one day be used to treat highly aggressive breast cancers at a lower cost, according to the report. The University of Toronto is studying using plants to more easily, cheaply and quickly produce medicines. The genetically-engineered tobacco is grown in Kentucky.
- CNN's Anderson Cooper has some fun at Kentucky's expense: The RidcuList.
