Domenic Esposito, a Boston-based artist and activist who installed a massive spoon sculpture in June outside of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma's headquarters, revived his artful protest Feb. 8 in Rhode Island by placing an 800-pound spoon outside of the main offices of Rhodes Pharmaceuticals, the Stamford Advocate reports.

Twitter may be a new, effective tool to help combat the nationwide opioid epidemic, research suggests.

Federal prosecutors in Philadelphia on Feb. 6 filed a civil lawsuit against the nonprofit group Safehouse, which plans to open a supervised space in Philadelphia for people to use illicit drugs, according to WHYY.

Matthew Napoletano, a former marketing manager at Insys Therapeutics, told a Boston jury that the opioid maker's founder John Kapoor promoted a policy that pushed physicians to prescribe higher doses of Subsys to boost profits, according to Bloomberg.

A study published in Pharmacoepidemiology & Drug Safety examined self-reported misuse of prescribed opioid medications in the U.S. general population.

The CDC estimates more than 176,600 Americans died from opioid-related overdoses between 2013-17 — and roughly 25 percent, or 47,600, of those deaths occured in 2017, according to U.S. News & World Report.

Among patients ages 65 and older, the rate of opioid-related hospitalizations jumped 34 percent between 2010 and 2015, according to statistical brief from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Michigan-based pain management physician Gavin Awerbuch, MD, on Jan. 30 testified that Insys Therapeutics' "beautiful" sales representatives and financial gifts persuaded him to write unnecessary prescriptions for the company's highly addictive opioid painkiller Subsys, reports Bloomberg.

Atrium Health developed an EHR alert system that can assess a patient's history with controlled substances to better prevent high-risk opioid prescriptions.

A Massachusetts judge has ordered the full release of a lawsuit claiming Purdue Pharma fueled the opioid epidemic, according to online medical news site STAT.

Top officials at Insys Therapeutics, maker of the addictive fentanyl spray Subsys, head to trial this week in Boston, according to Bloomberg.

Students and staff members at Ohio University's College of Heath Sciences in Athens created a virtual reality program that helps train individuals on how to respond to an opioid overdose.

Americans living in rural areas are far more likely to receive an opioid prescription than individuals living in big cities, according to the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published Jan. 18.

Counties where physicians received more gifts and payments from opioid-makers demonstrated higher overdose death rates than areas with lighter drug marketing, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open.

Jessie Gaeta, MD, internist and CMO of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, can find and revive patients who have overdosed using a reverse motion detector, according to The Boston Globe.

West Virginia has the highest rate of fatal opioid overdoses among U.S. states, with 49.6 per 100,000 individuals, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The ongoing government shutdown could hinder treatment for patients with opioid use disorder, since clinicians need approval from the Drug Enforcement Administration to prescribe medication-assisted treatments like buprenorphine, reports amNewYork.

Purdue Pharma's former president Richard Sackler, MD, knew his company's opioid painkiller OxyContin was being abused, but still pushed sales to physicians and tried to divert the blame to patients for becoming addicted, a revised court filing released Jan. 15 by the Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey claims.

Americans are more likely to die from a drug overdose than in a car crash for the first time in U.S. history, according to a new report from the National Safety Council.

The Texas Hospital Association is helping hospitals combat the opioid crisis by adapting existing technology to give providers better information when they need it, according to the Houston Chronicle.