instruction:
Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.
question:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday posted data showing nearly 68,000 drug overdose deaths were reported last year. The number may go up as more investigations are completed, but the agency expects the tally will end up below 69,000. Overdose deaths had been climbing each year since 1990, topping 70,000 in 2017. The numbers were celebrated by the U.S. secretary of health and human services. “Lives are being saved, and we’re beginning to win the fight against this crisis,” Alex Azar wrote in a tweet. But the overdose death rate is still about seven times higher than it was a generation ago. “We’re still in a pretty sad situation that we need to address,” said Rebecca Haffajee, a University of Michigan researcher. Researchers do not believe this is the start of a dramatic decline. Data from the first months of this year likely will show that the decrease is not gaining steam, said Farida Ahmad of the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. The improvement was driven by a drop in deaths from heroin and prescription painkillers. Those falls were offset somewhat by continuing growth in deaths involving a different opioid, fentanyl, as well as other drugs such cocaine and methamphetamines. Overdose deaths often involve more than one drug. The improvement is not uniform: Some states seem to be making dramatic progress, while deaths continue to rise in others. The preliminary CDC data suggested deaths last year were down by as many as 1,000 or more in Ohio and Pennsylvania — each seeing declines of about 20%. Meanwhile, deaths increased by about 17% in Missouri, which had more than 200 additional deaths. It can take months for authorities to complete toxicology tests and other elements of a death investigation involving drugs. And some states report faster than others. The CDC is expected to report more complete data later this year. The current overdose epidemic has killed more people than any other in U.S. history, and it had been on a soaring trajectory. From 2014 to 2017, overdose deaths jumped by 5,000 or more each year. Experts trace the epidemic’s origins to 1995 and the marketing of the prescription painkiller OxyContin. It was meant be safer and more effective than other prescription opioids, but some patients got hooked and found they could crush the tablets and snort or inject them to get high. Gradually, many turned to cheaper street drugs such as heroin and fentanyl. In 2015, heroin began causing more deaths than prescription painkillers or other drugs. In 2016, fentanyl and its close cousins became the biggest drug killer, and in 2018 they were involved in about 46% of the reported overdose deaths, according to the preliminary CDC data. Strategies to reduce drug overdose deaths have included tougher policing, treatment program expansions, policies to limit opioid painkiller prescriptions and wider distribution of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone. Haffajee and other researchers are trying to figure out what measures are most responsible for the slight improvement. “It’s complicated because there are so many policies going on, and as an evaluator it’s very hard to separate them out and determine which is working,” she said. Valerie Hardcastle, a Northern Kentucky University administrator who oversees research and other work on local health issues, has seen the overdose epidemic play out in her region, near Cincinnati. She believes a major factor is Narcan, a nasal spray version of naloxone, that has been widely distributed through the efforts of philanthropists and local, state, and federal officials. “It’s fantastic that we have fewer deaths, don’t get me wrong,” she said. “But I’m not sure it’s an indication that the opioid problem per se is diminishing. It’s just that we have greater availability of the drugs that will keep us alive.” ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content. ___ This story has been corrected to show Ahmad’s first name is Farida, not Farid.
answer:
Number of US overdose deaths appears to be falling.


question:
The story includes one expert’s estimate of the cost of treating brain and spinal cord defects, but it does not discuss those costs may be affected by folic acid fortification or how the cost of fortification affects food prices. Though individuals don’t face a huge cost, the aggregate cost of fortification is substantial. The story could have mentioned this at least briefly. The story highlights the decline in birth defects that is attributed to folic acid supplementation. However, it does not include a source for the statement that “fortification with the vitamin prevents an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 brain and spinal cord defects in both countries.” By contrast, a CDC web page on folic acid supplementation states that each year in the U.S. “[a]n estimated 1,000 more babies are born healthy since fortification.” http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/folicacid/data.html The story performs a service by bringing attention to the complex and difficult balancing of benefits and harms that comes with decisions about adding supplements to food. As mentioned above, the overall thrust of the story adequately captures the basic point that researchers are struggling to determine whether, what, and for whom folic acid supplementation may present potential harm. However, in some cases the comments of Dr. Mason portray a much stronger association between folic acid supplementation and cancer risk than even his own journal publications put forward. By intertwining the researcher’s personal statements with references to published trials and reviews, the story blurs the distinction between speculation and evidence. The story makes clear the complexity of and uncertainty surrounding possible associations between folic acid supplementation and cancer. However, the story exaggerates what is known about potential cancer risk by highlighting comments supporting a potential link with folic acid supplementation, while failing to provide context or contrary information. The story includes an estimate by Dr. Joel Mason that “excess folic acid consumption may cause an extra 15,000 cases of colorectal cancer each year in the U.S. and Canada.” But the story fails to define excess consumption, nor does it note that the are more than 160,000 new cases of colorectal cancer reported in the U.S. and Canada each year. And while the researcher may have told the reporter that he believes supplementation may be boosting cancer rates, a journal article Mason recently co-authored states that “Future studies need to explore whether a causal relationship exists between supraphysiological levels of folate intake and colorectal carcinogenesis.” Also, while the story states that “researchers noticed that rates of colorectal cancer went up in North America around the same time that fortification began,” the reporter should have explained the apparent discrepancy with CDC statements that between 1998 (when mandatory folic acid supplementation began in the U.S.) and 2005 both colorectal cancer incidence and deaths declined. References: Mason article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19057184 Cancer stats: http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/colorectal/statistics/ http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/colorectal/statistics/trends.htm http://www.cancer.ca/Canada-wide/About%20cancer/Cancer%20statistics/Canadian%20Cancer%20Statistics.aspx   A story of this length on a subject that is hotly debated among nutrition researchers should include comments from more than one nutrition researcher. The story fails to note that according to a disclosure statement in one of his recent journal articles, Dr. Mason has been a paid consultant to Wyeth Consumer Healthcare, a manufacturer of multivitamins. Reference: Disclosure statement with Joel B. Mason, Aaron Dickstein, Paul F. Jacques, Paul Haggarty, Jacob Selhub, Gerard Dallal, and Irwin H. Rosenberg A Temporal Association between Folic Acid Fortification and an Increase in Colorectal Cancer Rates May Be Illuminating Important Biological Principles: A Hypothesis Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers Prev. 2007 16: 1325-1329. However, because the story does touch on several aspects of the debate, we will give it the benefit of the doubt on this criterion even though we wish other sources had been named or that other nutrition experts had been quoted. The story points out the foods that are fortified with folic acid. However, there is no advice about how individuals could estimate their daily intake of folic acid or alter it, if they desired. The story points out that folic acid supplementation of flour has been required in the U.S. since 1998. It would have been helpful to also discuss whether and how consumers could reduce their intake of folic acid, if desired. Questions about potential harms of folic acid supplementation are indeed a hot topic in nutrition research. However, most of the studies and other reports mentioned in this story were published more than two years ago, so the debate is not as new as the story implies. Given the different aspects of the debate reflected in the story, we think it’s safe to assume this didn’t rely solely or largely on a news release – although we wonder why it relied so heavily on one nutrition expert’s perspectives.
answer:
Folic acid might be losing its sheen


question:
In a government-commissioned report, researchers at Public Health England (PHE) said evidence showed that “since at least 10 years ago more people are being prescribed more of these medicines and often for longer”. In 2017 to 2018 alone, 11.5 million adults in England - more than a quarter of the adult population - was prescribed one or more of the medicines under review, the PHE analysis found. The medicines included anti-anxiety drugs called benzodiazepines and sleeping pills known as z-drugs, as well as the epilepsy and anxiety medicines gabapentin and pregabalin, antidepressants and opioid pain medicines. Many of these can be addictive and could cause problems for people taking them or coming off them, PHE said. The report also found higher rates of prescribing to women and older people. While the prescription of some drugs, including benzodiazepines and opioids, has dipped a little recently amid fears about the deadly opioid epidemic in the United States, others, such as the gabapentin, pregabalin and some antidepressants, are being prescribed more often and for longer. “This means more people are at risk of becoming addicted to them or having problems when they stop using them,” PHE said. “It also costs the National Health Service a lot of money, some of which is wasted because the medicines do not work for everyone all the time, especially if they are used for too long.”  Responding to the PHE’s findings, the British Medical Association (BMA) doctors union said its members were worried:  “We have seen the devastation that addiction to prescription drugs has had in the United States, and while the problem here is on a lesser scale, doctors ... are concerned at the number of patients being prescribed these medicines, and the length of time they are taking them for,” it said in a statement. An opioid epidemic in the United States has killed almost half a million Americans since 1999, and a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) policy forum earlier this year warned that the United States “is by no means alone in facing this crisis.”   The Paris-based OECD said deaths linked to opioid use were rising sharply in Sweden, Norway, Ireland, and England and Wales. Campaigners at the UK Addiction Treatment Group (UKAT) said the PHE report showed “a nation crying out for help” and being put on potentially dangerous repeat courses of painkillers and antidepressants as a stop-gap measure. UKAT said the consequences of such prescribing were already in evidence with rising numbers of people seeking treatment for prescription drug addiction. Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said it was watching the U.S. crisis closely and aiming to take avoiding action in the UK. “We take the experience in the U.S. of dependence and addiction to opioids very seriously and are following ... developments ... to learn from the actions other countries are taking to tackle this issue,” it said in a statement.
answer:

UK fears crisis as 11.5 million get potentially addictive drugs.