opioid overdose

People who have lost children to pills laced with fentanyl are demanding that lawmakers adopt stricter penalties and are pressuring Silicon Valley for social media protections.

The bans from laws criminalizing drug paraphernalia adopted decades ago, but the devices are now recommended to help prevent overdose deaths. The Florida Legislature recently failed to end its ban.

A new wave of opioid deaths, fueled by fentanyl, is raising old fears in Palm Beach County. Meantime, sheriff's office policy on naloxone is an outlier in the state.

Opioid overdoses have been a major problem in Florida for years. The synthetic opioid fentanyl is even more dangerous. Health workers are trying to distribute overdose kits as widely as they can.

According to Ocala police, investigations have shown the drugs responsible for many of the overdose deaths enter the U.S. from Mexico.

New research released by the CDC found roughly 932,000 fatal overdoses from 1999-2020. Preliminary data show another 100,000 deaths this year.

With opioid overdoses surging, harm-reduction groups are calling on the FDA to change naloxone's prescription-only status. This would make it easier to get the lifesaving drug to people at risk.

The verdict in federal court comes as three of the country's largest pharmacy chains face thousands of lawsuits filed by communities across the U.S. The companies say they did nothing wrong dispensing huge quantities of opioids.

Black communities face a growing share of overdoses, but addiction treatment resources and attention are still focused on white communities.

The decision by a federal bankruptcy judge grants members of the family who own Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, sweeping protection from any liability for the opioid crisis.