FRANKFORT, Ky. — Kentucky’s attorney general has sued Express Scripts, claiming the big pharmacy benefit manager was at the center of an opioid dispensing chain that fueled a deadly addiction crisis still haunting his state. The lawsuit Attorney General Russell Coleman filed this week in state court claims St. Louis-based Express Scripts and its affiliated … Read more
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia’s new drug czar has a very personal reason for wanting to end the state’s opioid crisis: He was once addicted to prescription painkillers himself. Dr. Stephen Loyd, who has been treating patients with substance use disorder since he got sober two decades ago, says combating opioid addiction in the state … Read more
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — For decades, Jeff Card’s family company was known for manufacturing the once ubiquitous tin boxes where people could buy newspapers on the street. Today, reach into one of his containers and you may find something entirely different and free of charge: Naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal drug. Naloxone distribution containers have been … Read more
The first big update to U.S. methadone regulations in 20 years is poised to expand access to the life-saving drug starting next month, but experts say the addiction treatment changes could fall flat if state governments and methadone clinics fail to act. For decades, strict rules required most methadone patients to line up at special … Read more
DENVER — Simon Rubick had lost almost everything to decades of alcoholism and drug addiction. In 2022, he found himself without a vehicle and without a home, which forced his two teenage children to move in with friends. He had burned bridges with friends and family and it took a drug-induced stint in the hospital … Read more
LOS ANGELES — The arrest of five people in the overdose death of Matthew Perry has revealed key details about the final days of the “Friends” star, most of them spent in the throes of an addiction to the surgical anesthetic ketamine. Perry would die at age 54 on Oct. 28 after telling his assistant … Read more
NEW YORK — The Senate’s top Democrat said Sunday he will work to block a plan that would significantly cut the proposed budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warning that such a spending reduction could endanger the public. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York told The Associated Press he would block … Read more
BOSTON — Harvard University has decided against removing from campus buildings the name of a family whose company makes the powerful painkiller OxyContin, despite protests from parents whose children fatally overdosed. The decision last month by the Harvard Corporation to retain Arthur M. Sackler’s name on a museum building and second building runs counter to … Read more
EMBARGOED FOR 1 PM ET U.S. death rates fell last year for all age groups compared with 2022, federal health officials said Thursday. Here’s what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data showed: — COVID-19 fell to the 10th leading cause of death. Early in the pandemic, the coronavirus was the nation’s third leading … Read more
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Abdul Jalloh was the only practicing psychiatrist in Sierra Leone when he took over the country’s sole psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of the capital. Now six years later, the young doctor is leading a transformation of mental health services in the West African nation. He abolished the practice of chaining … Read more
