West St. Paul police required to speak to therapist

WEST ST. PAUL (AP) — A new initiative in West St. Paul requires police officers to have an annual mental health wellness checkup.

Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association executive director Andy Skoogman said officers’ jobs are demanding, sometimes even traumatic, yet many resist seeking therapy when they need it to avoid appearing weak. Skoogman says that may be changing.

Ellie Family Services will handle the checkups. Co-owner Erin Pash told the Star Tribune the counselors will not take notes. There will be no written records of conversations with the officers. Pash said officers can talk about whatever they want during the one-hour session, from parenting issues to work-life balance.

Data: 842M opioid pills sent to state pharmacies 2006-2012

ST. PAUL (AP) — Opioid manufacturers distributed about 842 million pills to Minnesota pharmacies from 2006 to 2012, amounting to 156 pills for each resident, according to newly released data.

Most of the pills were circulated in urban Hennepin and Ramsey counties, but rural counties topped the list for most pills dispensed per resident, the Minnesota Public Radio News reported based on analyzed data obtained by the Washington Post after a legal battle.

“It was the height of carelessness. It was the height of profits. It was the height of insanity, when people were looking the other way is when my son got sick and actually died,” said Dave Baker, a Republican state representative whose son died from an overdose in 2011. “How many great people are lost and how many families are devastated and will never be the same?”

The number of opioid-related deaths in the state rose from 153 in 2006 to 239 in 2012, a more than 35% increase, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Health Statistics. Those numbers include overdoses of heroin and other drugs bought on the street. Almost 1,400 Minnesotans died in that six-year period.

Opioid overdose deaths in Minnesota reached a record 427 in 2017. The state required prescribers to enroll in a prescription monitoring program that year.

Baker and other supporters for victims of overdose have long maintained that the pharmaceutical industry, prescribers and pharmacists helped fuel the opioid overdose crisis. Baker helped craft legislation that the Minnesota Senate passed earlier this year, which increases the annual registration fees on pharmaceutical manufacturers and drug wholesalers that sell or distribute opioids in Minnesota. The projected $20 million raised yearly will be used on funding opioid-related response programs that support a wide range of prevention, education, intervention, treatment and recovery strategies.

“We’re not supposed to penalize private companies like the distributors for selling a lot of product,” Baker said. “But when they are doing it on the backs of others and addiction is wiping out statewide budgets and county budgets for placement for families and children, they aren’t doing anything about it, then we have to actually step in and do something.”

In addition to the bill, the Wisconsin attorney general’s office is involved in at least four major lawsuits against opioid manufacturers and distributors. Oklahoma’s $270 million settlement with the maker of OxyContin this year was the first deal to come from a wave of lawsuits filed by states against companies that manufacture prescription opioids.

Man arrested in woman’s stabbing death in Bloomington

BLOOMINGTON (AP) — Police have arrested a man in the stabbing death of a woman at a home in Bloomington.

Bloomington Police Chief Jeff Potts said the 47-year-old woman was attacked late Sunday. Officers arrived and found the woman suffering from multiple stab wounds.

Despite live-saving efforts, the woman was pronounced dead. Her name was not released.

Police arrested a 56-year-old man on suspicion of homicide. The Star Tribune reported he remains jailed.

Court upholds Minnesota mining rules in win for PolyMet

ST. PAUL (AP) — A state appeals court on Monday dealt a setback to environmentalists who challenged Minnesota’s rules on hard-rock mining.

In a unanimous opinion, the Minnesota Court of Appeals said the rules developed by the Department of Natural Resources after public input in the early 1990s are valid. Environmentalists argued the rules are too vague to protect Minnesota’s natural resources in a new age of mining on the Iron Range.

Two companies are preparing to build the first copper-nickel mines in Minnesota. Hard-rock mining carries greater environmental risk than northeastern Minnesota’s iron ore and taconite mines.

In the first legal test of Minnesota’s environmental rules for hard-rock mining, a three-judge appeals panel concluded that the DNR’s rules do not exceed statutory authority or violate constitutional provisions.

DNR Deputy Commissioner Barb Naramore said the agency is pleased the judges affirmed the rules.

“We continue to believe that the current nonferrous rules fundamentally provide an effective framework for implementing our regulatory responsibilities and ensuring protection for public health and the environment,” Naramore said in a statement.

Jon Cherry, president and chief executive of PolyMet Mining Corp., which is first in line to open a copper-nickel mine in Minnesota, said Minnesota’s rules are among the strictest in the world, “and we demonstrated through the extensive environmental review and permitting process that we can meet or exceed these standards.”

But conservation groups challenging the rules criticized the court’s decision.

“Nonferrous mining presents new and unknown dangers, and DNR’s rules are not sufficient to protect Minnesota’s resources,” said Kevin Reuther, legal director for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy.

The center represents five other conservation groups; all are considering an appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, a co-petitioner, said it has already decided to ask the state Supreme Court to hear the case, the Star Tribune reported.