The Massachusetts legislature is proposing a new anti-opioid law that will restrict patients to a minimum amount of prescription painkillers received from their doctors.

This is an effort to curb addiction to the drug, while still offering support to pain sufferers, according to bostonglobe.com. However, a chief concern, posed by an economic analysis demonstrates the difficulty of maintaining sound health while restricting the drug.

Drug monitoring seems to save lives, but “once a prescription drug monitoring program goes into effect, patients become less satisfied with their pain treatment,” according to Angela Kilby, a graduate student in the MIT economics department.

Kilby measured the impact of prescription monitoring programs across the country and found that about 1,000 lives, including those of Massachusetts residents, are saved every year by implementing such programs.

The study estimates that about 75 million Americans a year seek pain relief from opioid prescriptions, but “once a prescription drug monitoring program goes into effect, patients become less satisfied with the pain treatment.”

According to Kilby, this was true of both injured workers seeking workers’ compensation, and patients receiving hospital care. She sited their need for “more recovery time” once a monitoring program was introduced.  Pain management also became worse, she said.

Massachusetts, which has a high incidence of drug overdoses, has been making multi-prong efforts to curb drug addiction. The anti-opioid bill will make it illegal for doctors to start patients suffering from pain with anything more than a seven-day supply of opioids.

Oregon pharmacists will now be able to prescribe birth control pills, but some worry that women will be lax in receiving preventative health checks. The bill is among more than 300 passed for the state and puts Oregon ahead of California, which is expected to be the second state to pass the law, according to upi.com. This move will allow pharmacists to make a determination about a woman’s reproductive health.

Women 18 years and older will be able to receive a pharmacist’s birth control pill prescription after filling out a health questionnaire. Pharmacists will make a determination about dispensing the pills and could refuse, for religious reasons, to provide them. However, state law will require that they refer the patient elsewhere.

Pharmacists must attend a mandatory training session before being permitted to write birth control prescriptions. Proponents like Dr. Alison Edelman, see the move as positive but cautions, “just having birth control accessible through a pharmacist doesn’t mean preventative health care isn’t important.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says “cervical cancer is the easiest cancer of the reproductive system that can be prevented by consistent doctor visits.”  It is hopeful that women will keep this in mind and regularly receive health checks from their licensed OB/Gyn, even though a doctor’s approval will no longer be required to receive birth control pills.

The law became effective Jan. 1. Among other laws becoming effective New Year’s day: paid sick leave will be given to workers and the wording on state marriage licenses will changed from “husband and wife” to “spouses in legal marriage.”

You might want to hold off on the sugar to sweeten your tea and avoid sweets altogether: a recent study of mice fed sugar demonstrated that breast cancer tumors and their spreading is more likely with high sugar consumption.

The risk is further increased in the Western world where high fructose corn syrup and table sugar  is consumed in a high percentage of food items, according to upi.com. Previous documented research shows a strong connection between sugar and inflammation as well as several types of cancer being linked to dietary sugar.

This latest research, according to Professor of Palliative Rehabilitation, and Integrative Medicine at MD Anderson, Dr. Lorenzo Cohen, “investigated the impact of dietary sugar on mammary gland tumor development in multiple mouse models, along with mechanisms that may be involved.”

Dr. Cohen, quoted in a press release  said, “we determined that it was specifically fructose, in table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, ubiquitous within our food system, which was responsible for facilitating lung metastasis and 12-HETE production in breast tumors.”

Mice were randomized into four separate diet groups and fed one of four diets with sucrose and fructose, at various levels.  By the time they were six months old, between 50 and 58 percent developed mammary tumors when fed the sucrose enriched diet.

Thirty percent of mice on a starch controlled diet “had measurable tumors” at the same age. Researchers also reported more lung metastases among the sucrose and fructose mice group.

According to Dr. Cohen “more research is needed to find whether sugar has a direct or indirect effect on tumor growth.”