The Health Resources and Services Administration awarded a $200,000 grant to University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa to develop a telehealth network for opioid abuse patients. 

Federal prosecutors have filed criminal charges against former opioid distributor Miami-Luken and two of its former executives, according to The Washington Post. 

Forty percent of primary clinics said they would not accept a new patient who takes daily doses of Percocet, a prescription opioid, for chronic pain from a past injury, according to a study published July 12 in JAMA Open Network.

Overdose-related deaths have fallen for the first time since 1990, according to preliminary CDC data cited by The New York Times.

Patients who receive nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, such as ibuprofen, along with opioids after surgery may use fewer opioids than patients who only receive opioids, according to new research.

The University of Montana received a $3.3 million contract from NIH on July 9 to fund development of a vaccine against opioid addiction, according to ABC Fox Montana.

Limiting the supply of opioids and boosting access to treatment are just two parts of the equation to solve the national drug epidemic. The third, less mentioned part is harm reduction, according to Travis Rieder, PhD, a medical bioethicist at Johns Hopkins University's Berman Institute of Bioethics in Baltimore.

Two-thirds of drug deaths around the world were caused by opioids in 2017, and that proportion was even higher in the U.S., where overdose deaths reached a new high, according to a report from the United Nations.

Residents in 412 U.S. counties are twice as likely as residents in other counties to be at high risk for opioid overdose deaths, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open.

Provisional data from the CDC suggests overdose-related deaths are falling in the U.S., according to The Wall Street Journal.

New Jersey rolled out a first-of-its-kind program that seeks to provide overdose victims with medication-assisted treatment sooner, according to STAT.

Lawyers have put on hold a proposal to bring all 24,500 communities across the U.S. into negotiations to reach a comprehensive national opioid settlement, according to Cleveland.com.

CMS will award 18-month planning grants totaling $50 million to at least 10 state Medicaid agencies for proposals that increase the capacity of substance use disorder treatment and recovery services, particularly those that address opioid use.

In the late 1990s, pharmaceutical companies assured the medical community that the risk of patients becoming addicted to certain opioid pain medication was minuscule. 

Many surgeons continued to write excessive opioid prescriptions for patients after surgery amid skyrocketing rates of overdose deaths in the U.S., according to an analysis from Kaiser Health News.

The FDA is proposing a tougher regulatory process for approving new opioids, the agency announced June 20.

Lawyers representing cities and counties suing drugmakers, distributors and retailers over their alleged roles in the opioid crisis have proposed bringing all 24,500 communities across the U.S. into negotiations to reach a comprehensive national opioid settlement, according to The New York Times.

Post-discharge opioid use is far more likely among patients who are given opioids during their hospital stay compared to patients who do not receive opioids, according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Dayton, Ohio-based Premier Health and Kettering Health Network, in partnership with Google sister company Verily, opened the first two facilities of the OneFifteen opioid addiction treatment system on June 14.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy announced on June 12 the eight finalists in the first stage of the Opioid Detection Challenge, which is offering $1.55 million in prizes for an automated tool to detect opioids in international mail.