The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/drugs/)
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force—experts whose recommendations can be pivotal for insurance plans under federal law—issued a draft recommendation that doctors ask patients about illicit drug use, including opioid painkillers, so they can be directed to treatment.
The family-run pharmacy Shearer Drug of Albany, Ky., purchased nearly 6.8 million pills that contained hydrocodone and oxycodone from 2006 through 2012, enough to give 96 pills each year to every person in its county of roughly 10,000 residents, the Washington Post reports.
People convicted of misdemeanor marijuana crimes in Manhattan will have their offenses hidden from public criminal records under a new class-action settlement. The sealing is taking place in a case filed under 2017 state criminal justice reforms.
As western Massachusetts experiences a dramatic spike in fatal overdoses, officials are embracing a controversial solution: sending men who have not committed crimes to jails and prisons for court-ordered addiction treatment. Men in one such program have filed suit challenging it.
Lawyers for cities and counties want to form a negotiating bloc to settle thousands of pending cases against drug makers, but state attorneys general argue that it is the states that should decide where the money goes.
Officials say federal and state laws make it impossible for labs to create test results that can tell the difference between illegal marijuana and legal hemp.
Two newspapers, the Washington Post and the Charleston, W.Va., Gazette-Mail, successfully fought for the disclosure of a Drug Enforcement Administration database on opioid distribution.
Urban overdose death rates overtook those of rural counties in 2016, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The change may be due to the effects of bootleg synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.
Saoirse Kennedy Hill, a granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy, died on Thursday after suffering an apparent overdose at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Ma. Hill, 22, had written of depression that “will be with me for the rest of my life.”
The formidable obstacles faced by individuals released from prison or jail, combined with family disruption and unemployment, contribute to the spread of the opioid epidemic, according to a study published in The Lancet Public Health journal.