California will allocate $8 million in funding to 31 hospitals to provide medication-assisted treatment to patients battling opioid use disorder in rural areas, reports Capital Public Radio.

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter claims Purdue Pharma executed a covert disinformation campaign attacking attorneys general who filed lawsuits against opioid manufacturers, according to a KRMG news report.

Restrictions insurers implement to help control costs — like prior authorization — may be limiting physicians' use of buprenorphine to treat patients with opioid use disorder, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Insys founder John Kapoor used a rap video parody featuring a life-size fentanyl spray bottle to motivate his sales team to get physicians to prescribe higher doses of the company's opioid pain reliever Subsys, according to The Boston Globe.  

Connecticut-based nurse practitioner Heather Alfonso on Feb. 11 testified that Insys Therapeutics gave her thousands of dollars in kickbacks for prescribing the company's highly addictive opioid painkiller Subsys, reports Bloomberg.

The DOD has enrolled nine states in its nationwide prescription drug monitoring program, an initiative to address addiction and reduce the illegal transfer of opioids within the military population, according to military.com.

Two pharmacies in Nashville, Tenn., were hit with a restraining order by the U.S. Justice Department that prohibits them from dispensing controlled substance medications, according to the Herald-Citizen.

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.