The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/drugs/)
Missouri joins a growing list of states that have sued pharmaceutical firms. State Attorney General Josh Hawley says their “campaign of fraud and deception” led to the opioid crisis. The suit names the pharmaceutical firms Endo, Purdue and Janssen.
An industry research group says data shows a 2.7 percent increase in collision claims since recreational marijuana sales began in 2014 and 2015 in Colorado, Washington and Oregon.
A Pew Charitable Trust analysis shows no correlation between state-level imprisonment rates of drug offenders and rates of illicit drug use, overdose deaths, and arrests.
New federal data show a 64 percent increase for inpatient care and a 99 percent jump for emergency room treatment between 2005 and 2014.
A bipartisan group of state attorneys general is investigating the marketing of prescription painkillers and the causes of widespread opioid addiction. The probe, which includes a majority of states, will target the allegedly deceptive marketing of the drugs.
Amid an opioid addiction epidemic that is killing more than 90 Americans every day, there is a movement to make it easier for relatives and health care providers to secure court orders quickly that would forcibly confine and treat people who are addicted to drugs.
No one has been arrested in the killing of award-winning journalist Javier Valdez in Mexico last month. Some 90 percent of crimes against journalists in that country go unpunished.
Attorney General says prosecutions involving medical marijuana should be allowed “in the midst of a historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime.” Yet reseqarch shows that opiate deaths and overdoses decrease in states with medical marijuana laws.
Lawsuits against painkiller manufacturers are borrowing legal tactics the state of Mississippi pioneered against Big Tobacco, which settled for a record $206 billion in 1998. The states asserted they were victims of an industry-induced nicotine addiction that spiked health care costs for Medicaid recipients. Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood is using a similar argument against opioid drugmakers.
On the “dark web,” many buyers visit anonymously using special browsers and purchase with virtual currencies like Bitcoin. Enough fenanyl to get 50,000 people high can fit in a standard envelope.