The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to stock the opioid overdose antidote naloxone in its automated external defibrillator cabinets at facilities nationwide starting in December, according to NPR. 

The Congressional Budget Office released its assessment of the House's opioid bill Sept. 28.

Rebecca Savage, a trained OB-GYN nurse, created a prescription drug safety foundation after her two sons died from accidental overdoses in 2015, according to USA Today.

Congress revealed a 660-page revised opioids bill the night of Sept. 25 as part of a bipartisan effort to address the opioid epidemic, according to The Hill.

Lawmakers are working to combine two separate opioids bills passed by the House and Senate into a final opioids package to send to President Donald Trump's desk, according to STAT.

The opioid epidemic has grown into a pressing political issue, which many midterm election campaigns aim to bring to the forefront of their platform, according to The Wall Street Journal.

U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, MD, said Americans must change the way they discuss the opioid epidemic and addiction in a Sept. 20 report entitled, 'Facing Addiction in America: The Surgeon General's Spotlight on Opioids.'

The Senate passed its opioid bill Sept. 17 with bipartisan support. The Opioid Crisis Response Act aims to prevent illicit fentanyl trafficking, make individuals and institutions accountable for drug diversion and improve patient access to treatments, according to STAT.

It is important to address both those already addicted to opioids as well as preventing opioid addiction. For more than 24 years, I practiced as a general internist and treated both types of patients: those addicted to opioids and others who needed medication for chronic pain. For a better understanding of the opioid crisis, consider these four insights.

Stephen Colbert discussed the opioid epidemic and took aim at pharmaceutical companies during a "Late Show" segment Sept. 14, according to Rolling Stone.

Abraham Joy, PhD, an assistant professor at Akron (Ohio) University, and his research team received $200,000 from Ohio's Third Frontier Commission to fund research into a material that can detect opioid residue, according to News 5 Cleveland.

116 daily deaths, 42,249 yearly deaths, and $504 billion were the statistics that haunted Americans as a result of the opioid epidemic in 2016, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Instagram is launching a new pop-up feature to help users who search drug-related hashtags find support resources, The Hill reports.

One-hundred and seventy-nine drug diversion incidents were reported between January to June of 2018, costing healthcare organizations $162 million in lost pills, according to Protenus' "Drug Diversion Digest" report.

A record 809 million opioids were prescribed in outpatient settings between 2006-15, and one-third of the prescriptions lacked physician explanation, according to a study published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Many adolescents and young adults with opioid use disorder aren't receiving medication-assisted treatment, according to a study published in JAMA Pediatrics.

Comprehensive addiction training is rare in American medical education, which denies physicians the necessary diagnostic and communication skills required to treat patients with substance use disorder, according to The New York Times.

Drug exchange programs, which would function along the same lines as a needle exchange program, could help public health officials prevent dangerous overdoses caused by tainted synthetic drugs, according to an op-ed written by Ian Ayers, PhD, professor at New Haven, Conn.-based Yale Law School, and published in The Washington Post.

Endo International seeks to resolve more than 1,000 lawsuits filed against the company over its opioid painkiller Opana in a single deal, instead of joining an industrywide settlement with other opioid makers and distributors, according to Bloomberg.

Richard Sackler, MD, whose family owns Purdue Pharma, earned a patent for a new formulation of buprenorphine, according to STAT.