The state of Massachusetts has filed a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma LP, the company that developed the semisynthetic opioid OxyContin in 1995 and aggressively marketed it while downplaying the risk of addiction. It’s part of a growing backlash to Purdue, a pharmaceutical giant the New Yorker characterized as an …

On Tuesday, the National Institutes of Health revealed its new plan to tackle the opioid crisis, which it dubbed the Helping to End Addiction Long-term, or HEAL, initiative. Among the ideas presented are research programs devoted to better understanding chronic pain, developing new non-opioid painkillers and addiction…

It’s no secret that opioids kill more Americans annually than ever before. But a new study published Friday in JAMA Network Open highlights just how devastating the crisis has been to certain age groups. In 2016, it found, opioid overdoses were responsible for a fifth of all deaths among people in their mid-20s to…

The US likely experienced its third consecutive year of a sagging life expectancy in 2017, based on preliminary data published this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Increased deaths from suicide and drug overdose probably played a role in the decline.

New research out today in the New England Journal of Medicine highlights yet another impact of the opioid crisis: More people have gotten the organ donations they’ve needed in recent years because of more deaths caused by drug abuse and overdose. The research also suggests these donated organs aren’t any less safe…

Walmart has announced that the company will roll out new restrictions on opioid prescriptions this summer at Walmart and Sam’s Club stores, and will require e-prescriptions for opioids by the year 2020. The move comes as the opioid epidemic continues to kill more and more Americans every year.

Over the past few years, a hospital in Portland, Oregon has dramatically shifted its approach to treating patients with substance use disorders, including opioid addiction. And since then, the hospital has undergone a “sea change” in the way its medical staff think about and address addiction, according to a study…

The US government is earnestly trying to tackle the opioid crisis, which is killing tens of thousands of Americans each year, but there’s no easy way to tell whether its efforts are even working, says a new report by a federal watchdog agency.

A comprehensive report published this week in JAMA finds that the US has overall become a safer place to live over the past 25 years. But the report also reveals that in several states and among certain age groups, it’s only become deadlier.

Amidst the worsening opioid crisis—which killed more than 42,000 Americans in 2016 and even shortened US life expectancy—the federal head of public health has come out with a plea to the public: Learn how to use naloxone, the nasal spray that can reverse an opioid overdose, and carry around as much of it as you can.

Uber is partnering with Goodwill to offer free rides to Virginians recovering from opioid addiction. Announced Friday, Goodwill, Uber, and Chesterfield County officials are launching a small pilot program to help those in need, offering them free rides to treatment.

In 2016, 63,632 people in the US died from a drug overdose, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has concluded. And many more of those deaths were caused by potent opioids obtained on the streets than in years past.

Earlier today, Politico provided a preview of what’s believed to be the broad contours of Trump’s grand plan for addressing the opioid crisis. But while some of the details include common sense measures embraced by public health and opioid experts, others are setting their nerves on edge.

The dangers posed by the opioid crisis only seem to be getting worse, according to a new Vital Signs report released today by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More people than ever are ending up in the emergency room as a result of an opioid overdose, and in some parts of the country, the increase has been…

In response to the opioid epidemic that is killing tens of thousands of Americans a year, the U.S. government is poised to further restrict the amount of opioids Medicare patients can have access to at any one time, via a policy that would tell insurers to deny coverage for certain prescriptions on the spot. But a…

While adults are the primary victims of overdose from opioid drugs like oxycodone and heroin, the US opioid crisis is putting more and more children in the hospital, too, suggests a new study published Monday in Pediatrics. And many kids are likely getting the drugs from their parents’ own supply.

The Trump administration’s approach to the opioid crisis has been at times clumsy and nonsensical. With that in mind, it seems the Food and Drug Administration is preparing to take a big step in the right direction: It plans to widen the scope of medication-assisted treatment, or MAT.

Who you are is the result of a complicated interplay between your environment, your genes, and probably a few other factors science has yet to uncover. Genetics influence somewhere around half of a person’s “vulnerability to addiction,” according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Now, as opioid addiction has…

It’s no secret that the Food Drug Administration isn’t a fan of kratom, a popular herb purported to help people with digestive problems, chronic pain, and most prominently, opioid withdrawal. So I can only assume the FDA got a small bit of pleasure when it announced it would oversee the destruction of a “large volume”…