Two major prescription drug distributors have agreed to settle a West Virginia lawsuit alleging they fueled West Virginia’s opioid epidemic with excessively large shipments of painkillers into the state over several years. Boone County Circuit Court Judge William Thompson disclosed …
Drug wholesalers shipped 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to West Virginia in just six years, a period when 1,728 people fatally overdosed on these two painkillers, according to an investigation by the Charleston Gazette-Mail. That amounts to 433 of …
The health insurer Cigna has agreed to end a policy that required physicians to fill out extra paperwork before they could give patients a drug used to treat opioid addiction. The move announced Friday comes after New York Attorney General …
Experts are warning about the dangers of opioid and heroin abuse in South Carolina, pointing out that almost as many people die from overdoses of such drugs as are killed in accidents each year on the state’s highways. During a …
There have been fewer drivers killed in car crashes who tested positive for opioids in states with medical marijuana laws than there were before the laws went into effect, according to a new study. The study, conducted at Columbia University’s …
As the number of overdose deaths from prescription painkillers has soared in recent years, pharmaceutical companies that manufacture opioid painkillers, and allied advocacy groups, have donated more than $500,000 to state and federal elected officials and major political parties in …
Alabama has the highest level of prescription opioid use in the country, and companies that make the painkillers and their allies have hired an average of 18 lobbyists annually in the state since 2006 to push their policies. A joint …
As New Hampshire considers mandatory drug prevention education in all grades, the state’s opioid crisis has heightened the sense of urgency for existing programs that largely target teens. A proposal to require at least two hours of age-appropriate drug and …
The Reno, Nev. doctor at the center of a federal investigation into an illegal prescription drug ring is being accused by the parents of an overdose victim of ignoring their warnings and continuing to increase the strength of their son’s …
Nearly one out of every three (32 percent) opioid prescriptions, which are subsidized by America’s employers, is being abused, according to a report by a healthcare data and technology company. San Francisco-based Castlight Health Inc. released the study, “The Opioid …
