Opioids

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.

The debate around bail reform focused predominantly on New York City’s Rikers Island, but the bigger impact may be upstate, where almost two-thirds of the state’s jail capacity is located.

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

Staff at the troubled Orleans Justice Center are also accused of violating Edward Patterson’s constitutional rights by failing to treat his drug addiction.

Criminalization as a response to the overdose crisis can cost lives.

His legal team had pushed for clemency, arguing that Bucklew’s previous attorneys mishandled his capital murder case.

In April, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that his execution, which experts have said will be bloody and gruesome, does not amount to cruel and unusual punishment. But problems with his case started long before that, his attorneys say.

In a rare case of local media nuance, a Boston TV news station provided a humane and health-focused segment on safe drug use.

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

Most coverage of police raids targeting homeless people and substance users parroted official—and fraught—talking points.

When it comes to criminal justice, advocates say, Attorney General Josh Shapiro seems intent on maintaining the status quo.

In 2016, Madison Jensen died from opiate withdrawal at the Duchesne County jail. New court filings allege that jail staff, including its nurse, ignored her rapidly deteriorating health.

Recent legal victories have spurred counties and states to provide medication-assisted treatment to prisoners struggling with substance use.

With Appeal contributor Maia Szalavitz

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

A new DA in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, is treating the overdose crisis as a criminal matter rather than a community health issue.

Prisoners can shave time off their sentences by participating in shock incarceration programs. More than a dozen former shock prisoners say that comes at a steep cost.

‘Worst policy imaginable’ punishes, rather than treats, patients who earn less than a dollar an hour, advocates say.

Darcel Clark’s approach to overdose deaths continue the criminalization of drug users and put her on the wrong side of history, advocates say.

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

Under Pennsylvania’s drug delivery resulting in death statute, a man faces up to 40 years in prison for sharing heroin with a woman who overdosed.

The Boyd County Detention Center has been consumed in chaos, even as the DOJ investigates it. Now, the community is pinning hopes for reform on a new jailer.

Two women died at the Duchesne County Jail in the span of about one week in 2016. Now their families are suing in federal court.

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 […]

Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins seeks a fourth term as critics blast him for a record that includes poor jail conditions, in-custody suicides, and the deaths of two young people at the hands of his deputies.

Despite looming questions about what happened, Jhenea Pratt is now facing life without parole.

Few of the prisons trying to stem flow of contraband Suboxone offer substantial opioid treatment programs.

As the federal government vows to pursue ‘swift and aggressive action’ against the sites, experts weigh in on what’s likely to happen next.

A bill introduced in the state would require all chronic pain patients to enter into an agreement with their doctor before being prescribed opioid medication for the first time.

Public health advocates are concerned that ‘Kristen’s Law,’ meant to punish drug dealers, will criminalize users and fail to stem the opioid crisis.

Grassroots group VOCAL-NY is teaching people with substance use disorder how to avoid getting ensnared in the criminal justice system.

York County resident Aaron Hinds overdosed on heroin with a friend. The friend died, and Hinds now faces a ‘drug delivery resulting in death’ charge and a 40-year prison sentence.

In overdose-wracked Franklin County, Pennsylvania, a small-time dealer is denied bail, while the number of drug induced homicide cases has skyrocketed.

Guest Zachary A. Siegel is a journalist covering the opioid crisis.

A new paper argues that President Johnson’s 1967 Commission on Law Enforcement’s report on the subject was “decades ahead of its time.”

In the ‘fentanyl’ bust at a ‘narcotics house,’ no opioids were seized at all.

M. thought she was doing the right thing. She had become dependent on opioids, but when she learned she was pregnant, she immediately tried to enroll in a medication assisted treatment (MAT) program. MAT is the standard of care for treating people with opioid use disorder — especially pregnant women, as quitting opioids too suddenly […]