News

After its opioid painkiller helped cause the nation’s drug overdose crisis, the family behind OxyContin allegedly wanted to try a new venture: addiction treatment.

As the nation's opioid crisis has devastated thousands of families, it also has taken a crippling financial toll on cities, small towns and counties in Ohio and around the country.

The U.S. Surgeon General’s office estimates that more than 20 million people have a substance use disorder. Meanwhile, the nation’s drug overdose crisis shows no sign of slowing. Yet, by all accounts, there aren’t nearly enough physicians who specialize in treating addiction — doctors with extensive clinical training who are board-certified in addiction medicine.

The state's prescription reporting system shows the number of prescription opioids dispensed to Ohioans declined for the sixth consecutive year in 2018.

Drug users who buy opioids online through the “dark web” seek one particular quality in internet-market dealers – trustworthiness. That key finding from research by sociologists at The Ohio State University may provide an opening for law enforcement to help reduce illegal online drug sales.

New research uncovers more damage wrought by the opioid epidemic: Cases of a dangerous heart infection linked to injection drug use have spiked in recent years at an Ohio medical center.

Limiting prescriptions seems logical, but a simulation study shows it would actually increase deaths, not decrease them, in the initial years.

Last April, The Baltimore Sun ran an op-ed essay by a woman in mourning. Her sister, a “middle-class suburban mom,” had become addicted to alcohol and opioids and died. Two years earlier, The Wall Street Journal published the names and photographs of some of the 300,000 Americans who had died of opioid overdoses since the 1990s. Smiling faces stared back at the reader with eyes full of promise.