Health

Tobacco and vape retailers have filed a lawsuit designed to stop Multnomah County from enacting its ban on flavored tobacco and nicotine products next year, marking the latest in a series of battles between the local tobacco industry and government regulators over the future of flavored tobacco sales in the state. The store Division Vapor […]

Multnomah County commissioners voted unanimously Thursday to ban the sale of flavored tobacco and nicotine in an effort to curb youth smoking and prevent young people from getting addicted to nicotine. “This is going to save peoples’ lives,” said County Chair Deborah Kafoury. “There will be teenagers today who do not start smoking or vaping […]

Overlapping respiratory viruses are currently straining the Portland region’s hospital capacity, triggering recommendations to wear masks indoors and reconsider any social plans.  “This is not a crisis of disease, this is a crisis of resources,” said Wendy Hasson with Randall Children’s Hospital. “Meaning, we simply don’t have enough nurses, respiratory therapists, and support staff to […]

Multnomah County leaders heard hours of public testimony Monday about their proposed ban on flavored tobacco and nicotine products, including menthol. Public comments were split between retailers concerned that a ban on flavored tobacco would potentially shutter their shops, and health officials and community members urging the passage of the ban to combat the rising […]

Over half of transgender and nonbinary people who died in the Portland metro area over the past decade were misgendered on their death certificates, a new study from tri-county officials found. The findings underscore how the region’s death investigation system is not set up to record valuable gender identity information. “What we learned will likely […]

Less than a week after the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) declared an hMPXV, or Monkeypox, outbreak in Oregon, state health experts have recorded 95 confirmed or presumed Monkeypox cases across seven Oregon counties. “Right now, the best thing you can do is to know your body and know the symptoms,” said state epidemiologist Dean Sidelinger […]

This article was first published in The Stranger, the Mercury’s sister publication.      Like an insistent, annoying customer trying to cut in line at the coffee shop, here comes monkeypox to butt into our lives. We were full-up on viruses before this new one came along, thank you very much, but now we have […]

Tetra Images / Getty Images Oregon is still not doing enough to counteract overprescribing opioids within the state, a follow-up audit from Secretary of State Shemia Fagan found. The report, released to the public Wednesday, indicates that the state needs legislative changes in order to effectively use its Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP)—a database that […]