The Justice Department on Wednesday announced 53 medical professionals and seven other individuals have been charged in connection with allegedly illegally prescribing and distributing opioids and other dangerous narcotics.
Lawsuits filed by the attorneys general in Massachusetts and New York have brought to light the extensive involvement of the Sackler family, which owns OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, in the opioid crisis, The New York Times reports.
Purdue Pharma, which makes OxyContin, has agreed to pay $270 million to resolve a lawsuit filed by Oklahoma’s attorney general, The Wall Street Journal reports. The majority of the settlement will fund a national opioid addiction center.
Teens prescribed opioids after surgery are almost twice as likely to use the drugs long-term if they have a family member who has filled opioid prescriptions for four months or more over the past year, a new study finds.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is weighing whether to recommend prescribing the opioid overdose antidote naloxone along with opioid prescriptions, CNN reports.
A new study finds many pharmacies in California don’t offer the opioid overdose antidote naloxone without a prescription, even though state law has allowed pharmacists to furnish naloxone without a physician’s prescription since 2016.
A new report from the Drug Enforcement Administration finds controlled prescription drugs, including opioids, are responsible for the largest number of overdose deaths of any illicit drug class since 2001.
A new opioid, Dsuvia, that is far more potent than fentanyl and 500 times stronger than morphine is nearing approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, according to MarketWatch.
Five doctors in New York have been indicted by federal authorities for writing more than 8.5 million allegedly unnecessary oxycodone prescriptions, NBC News reports.
Doctors give no documented reason for prescribing opioids in 29 percent of cases, according to a study published this week in Annals of Internal Medicine.
A new study finds doctors who were informed of their patients’ deaths from prescription opioids were less likely to prescribe the drugs for new patients.
Teens and young adults who fill an opioid prescription after wisdom teeth removal are almost three times as likely to use opioids persistently compared with their peers who don’t fill their prescription, a new study finds.
A study of opioid prescribing in each U.S. congressional district finds the highest rates are in the Southeast, Appalachia and the rural West, HealthDay reports.
Increased regulation of opioids has led to a growing number of sales online, through an underground network of websites known as the “darknet,” Newsweek reports.
The Drug Enforcement Administration this week proposed changing rules that govern the amount of prescription opioids that drug manufacturers can produce each year. The changes could sharply reduce the annual production of opioids, Reuters reports.
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