Herbal supplement kratom is tied to more US deaths

NEW YORK - U.S. health officials say overdose deaths involving the herbal supplement kratom are more common than previously reported.

A government report released Thursday said kratom was a cause in 91 overdose deaths in 27 states. Officials previously said they knew of 44 nationally.

Most who died had also taken heroin, fentanyl or other drugs. But kratom was the only substance detected in seven of the deaths.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the numbers after combing through death certificates and toxicology reports from an 18-month period.

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Winnipeg police officers are in a standoff that began Thursday morning in Westwood.

Police were called to Byrd Avenue shortly before 9:30 a.m. after a man was seen walking with what appeared to be a firearm, said Winnipeg Police Service spokesman Const. Claude Chancy.

Officers have identified a home connected to the investigation, he said. Police have taken one man into custody and seized several weapons, including a firearm, said Chancy. He was not sure if the man arrested was the individual spotted walking with the firearm.

A section of Byrd Avenue and Davis Crescent has been closed to traffic.

On the same morning, the Free Press carried two pieces written from opposite vantage points, arriving at the same locked door.

Charles Bernstein, writing as a gastroenterologist, described a nurse-practitioner program at Health Sciences Centre that gave patients with inflammatory bowel disease somewhere to turn before their illness forced them to an emergency room. It was then not funded to continue, and it ended. A service that had been approved, put in place, and shown to work was allowed to lapse.

Tom Brodbeck, writing as a columnist, described Shared Health, an organization created eight years ago as a fourth layer of administration added to the three the system already had — Manitoba Health, the regional authorities, and hospital administrations. He asked what this layer has done for patient care that those three could not, found no one able to answer, and concluded that the province should either make the case or let the structure go.

One writer watched something that worked disappear. The other watched something no one can justify persist. Their accounts are two symptoms of one disease.