Tag: The Clarion-Ledger

Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith at an election night party in Jackson, Miss., this month. — A special election for the Senate in Mississippi has become a test of racial and partisan politics in the Deep South, as a Republican woman, Cindy Hyde-Smith, and an African-American Democrat, Mike Espy, compete for the last Senate seat still up for grabs in the 2018 midterm campaign. Ms. Hyde-Smith, who was appointed to a seat in the Senate earlier this year, seemed until recently to be on a glide path toward winning the election in her own right. A private Republican poll last week found Ms. Hyde-Smith’s lead over Mr. Espy had narrowed to just five percentage points, three people briefed on the data said. “It would’ve been so much better if she apologized,” Mr. Feaster said. The contest went to a runoff when none of four candidates received the 50 percent of votes needed to win outright. Strategists in both parties believe Ms. Hyde-Smith remains the favorite: She was the top vote-getter in the first round, slightly outpacing Mr. Espy even though there was another Republican — Chris McDaniel, a divisive, strongly conservative state senator — on the ballot. No Democrat has won a Senate race in Mississippi since 1982. “People know there’s a runoff. Mr. Espy’s advisers have told political donors that they believe he needs to mobilize black voters in force and win about a quarter of white voters to defeat Ms. Hyde-Smith, a near-herculean task in a state where the two political parties are split chiefly along racial lines.

Greg Bufkin, who has suffered severe migraines since the 1990s, found that after he quit taking opioids, to which he had become addicted, his pain was better managed by non-opioid painkillers such as ibuprofen. Amid growing evidence opioids are not an effective treatment for chronic pain — and that they may actually make pain worse — Mississippi is reining in prescriptions with physician restrictions that some are calling unreasonable and even dangerous. The Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure, comprised of eight medical professionals, has settled on a series of new regulations it hopes will make physicians rethink prescribing opioids for chronic pain, but ultimately leave many decisions up to the doctors. It tricks you into think you're hurting A neurologist in Hattiesburg explained to Bufkin what happened in his brain in a way that made sense to him. Doctors in Mississippi wrote 3.3 million opioid prescriptions in 2017 — more than there are people in the state. She has been taking a combination of opioids and anti-inflammatory drugs roughly five years. If it were not for the anti-inflammatory I'm on with the (opioid) pain medication, I would be bedridden," Corley said. It's not the medication." Austin also takes an antidepressant. A 2003 study found that combating feelings of social exclusion and physical pain take place in the same part of the brain.