Marijuana has been shown to help ease pain and a few other health problems, yet two-thirds of U.S. states have decided pot should be legal to treat many other conditions with little scientific backing. At least 1.4 million Americans are using marijuana for their health, ...
Opioid maker Insys Therapeutics to pay $225 million to settle U.S. probes into fentanyl marketing
An opioid manufacturer has agreed to pay $225 million to resolve federal investigations into allegations that it paid kickbacks and used other illegal marketing tactics to sell a powerful fentanyl spray, authorities said Wednesday. The settlement stems from criminal and civil probes into Insys Therapeutics ...
Landmark U.S. opioid trial against Johnson & Johnson begins in Oklahoma
The first civil trial that could hold a drug company responsible for the U.S. opioid epidemic began Tuesday in Oklahoma — a case that could affect thousands of others like it. The trial pits the state against Johnson & Johnson. Two other drug companies named ...
Teva to pay $85 million settlement in Oklahoma opioid case; J&J trial looms
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. agreed to pay $85 million to settle an Oklahoma lawsuit claiming that illegal marketing of its opioid painkillers contributed to a public health crisis in the state. The deal, announced Sunday, was reached just as the case was about to go ...
'White-coated drug dealers': 60 people charged in illegal prescription opioid crackdown
Federal authorities said Wednesday they have charged 60 people, including 31 doctors, for their roles in illegally prescribing and distributing millions of pills containing opioids and other dangerous drugs. U.S. Attorney Benjamin Glassman of Cincinnati described the action as the biggest known takedown yet of ...
More than 10,000 Canadians have died of opioid-related overdoses since a public health crisis erupted in 2016, according to new data released Wednesday. The latest figures — 3,200 deaths in the first nine months of 2018 — show that the powerful painkiller fentanyl remains "a ...
U.S. doctors overprescribed deadly drug fentanyl to patients, researchers report
Fentanyl, a highly dangerous painkiller at the heart of the U.S. opioid epidemic, has been overprescribed by doctors, according to a report Tuesday that accused health authorities and manufacturers of being too lax in their oversight. The drug is a synthetic opioid up to 100 ...
U.S. border agency claims biggest-ever fentanyl bust in Arizona truck check
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials announced Thursday their biggest fentanyl bust ever, saying they captured nearly 254 pounds (114 kg) of the deadly synthetic opioid from a secret compartment inside a load of Mexican produce heading into Arizona. The drug was found hidden Saturday ...
U.S. life expectancy falls again as overdose deaths top 70,000 and suicides surge
Life expectancy in the United States dropped yet again as drug overdose deaths continued to climb — taking more than 70,000 lives in 2017, a record high — and suicides rose, a U.S. government report said Thursday. The drug overdose rate rose 9.6 percent compared ...
Firm's 600% opioid antidote price hike cost taxpayers millions: U.S. senators
Kaleo Inc.'s more than 600 percent price increase on its opioid-overdose antidote has cost the Medicare and Medicaid health program $142 million since 2014, according to a report by two U.S. senators. Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio and Tom Carper of Delaware said in the ...
Amid protests, Nebraska conducts first U.S. execution with opioid fentanyl
Nebraska on Tuesday carried out America's first execution using fentanyl — the opioid at the center of the country's deadly overdose crisis — as part of a previously-untested, four-drug combination. Carey Dean Moore, sentenced to death for two 1979 murders, was the first prisoner executed ...
Dr. Ronny Jackson had a pattern of recklessly prescribing drugs and drunken behavior, including crashing a government vehicle while intoxicated and doling out a large supply of a prescription opioid to a White House military staff member, according to a summary of accusations compiled ...
