The Food and Drug Administration says abuse of the painkiller Opana ER has fueled an outbreak of HIV, hepatitis C and a serious blood disorder, though it was reformulated to try to reduce abuse.
The director of National Drug Control Policy under President Obama, Michael Botticelli, says the proposed GOP health bill would decrease access to treatment in the middle of an opioid crisis.
Charlie Oen was addicted to heroin as a teenager. At 25, he's now clean and a peer counselor in Lima, Ohio, where he tries to help people who started using drugs before he was born.
Prescott, Ariz., has become a destination of choice for people trying to get sober, with growing numbers of group homes for recovering addicts. Some residents are calling for regulation of the homes.
"We have this idea that if we are just cruel enough and mean enough ... to people with addiction, that they will suddenly wake up and stop, and that is not the case," journalist Maia Szalavitz says.
After four or five of his patients died from opioid overdoses in one month, Craig Smith, a family doctor in Bridgton, Maine, realized he couldn't wait for someone else to offer addiction treatment.
The FDA could soon approve an implantable form of a drug used to treat opioid addiction. While the approach helped patients avoid relapse in tests, its price may be prohibitive for some, doctors say.
When a woman addicted to opioids gives birth, she is too often dismissed as an obstacle to her infant's health. A Connecticut hospital is challenging that attitude — and the culture of care.
