Fentanyl

Law-enforcement spent weeks scaremongering about opioids showing up in candy this Halloween. Despite the media frenzy, no drugs seem to have actually turned up.

You can’t incarcerate a public health problem. It doesn’t make us safer. It doesn’t repair harm.

Advocates say the pandemic has exacerbated the overdose crisis in the state by forcing people into isolation and impeding access to treatment.

In Cook County, Illinois, suspected or confirmed fatal overdose deaths doubled over last year in the first five months of this year.

Recent successes in stemming the opioid crisis could be reversed if public health budgets are cut or the crisis is seen as secondary to the pandemic.

Rhode Island prosecutors charged nine people with felony distribution of the addiction treatment drug. Reform prosecutors in other states are declining such charges and instead encouraging access to the drug.

Dennis Sica struggled with substance use disorder and sold small amounts of heroin that prosecutors connected to overdose deaths. Because of an 1980s-era federal law, he was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Legislators are considering giving the DEA dangerous authority, harm reduction advocates say.

Criminalizing those who sell drugs by enacting more punitive laws may lead to more dangerous drug use and will disproportionately affect communities of color, a new report suggests.

Media coverage obsessively focuses on homicides, which are at historical lows. Meanwhile, suicides and overdoses skyrocket, quietly driving record declines in American life expectancy.

With Appeal contributor Maia Szalavitz

Sensational and false news reports about the drug are pushing lawmakers to enact harmful policies.

Trooper testimony inconsistent with video and misconduct among state and local law enforcement in New Hampshire and Massachusetts have caused at least 15 drug cases to unravel.

A Florida woman with substance use disorder allegedly brokered a drug sale that ended in a fatal overdose; she faces 15 years in prison.

In May 2016, 26-year-old Caleb Smith was prepping for medical school entry exams, and ordered what he thought was Adderall off the internet to help him study. After the package arrived at his home in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, his girlfriend, 26-year-old Amanda Leach, asked to try some. Smith obliged, and days later, Leach was found dead […]

Groups like the Loop and DanceSafe test drugs like Ecstasy and warn users of high dosages and adulterants, but federal legislation from the early 2000s has live music promoters wary of their brand of harm reduction.

Overdoses on fentanyl, an uber-potent synthetic opioid, are the main driver of the opioid crisis: deaths related to the drug more than doubled from 2015 to 2016, killing nearly 20,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Pennsylvania is a locus of the crisis. In 2016, fentanyl was present in over half of the […]

On Thursday, President Trump announced that his administration will soon declare the opioid crisis a national emergency, following the interim recommendation of his Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. “We’re going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money on the opioid crisis,” said Trump. “We are going to […]