Watch 8:30
With highest hepatitis C mortality rate in U.S., Oregon expands access to life-saving drugs
New drugs can cure up to 95 percent of patients with hepatitis C, a virus that can be debilitating or deadly. And there’s been a 20 percent rise in new infections from 2015 to 2016 due to the opioid epidemic.
Medicare doesn’t cover methadone treatment. Here’s how Congress may change that
Federal money is flowing to states to open new methadone clinics through the 21st Century Cures Act, but despite the nation's deepening opioid crisis, the Medicare drug program for the elderly covers methadone only when prescribed for pain.
Purdue Pharma promoted Oxycontin for years. Now, it is combating the opioid crisis
After years of aggressively promoting OxyContin as a safe and effective way to combat pain, the company is — equally aggressively — recasting itself as a fundamental player in the response to a crisis that many experts say it helped…
Watch 5:58
‘The Trade’ tells personal stories of far-reaching drug crisis
The new Showtime documentary series "The Trade" shows the pain and consequences of the nation's opioids epidemic by putting a human face on the crisis. Best known for the Oscar-nominated film "Cartel Land," director Matthew Heineman wanted to show just…
The opioids crisis appears to be deepening across the country. That’s according to a stark new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found that emergency room visits for suspected overdoses rose by an average of 30…
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioids - including prescription opioids, heroin and fentanyl - killed more than 42,000 people in 2016, more than any year on record.
In an opioid epidemic that began in the late 1990s, drug deaths have been climbing steadily every year, in nearly every state. A break in that trend, even if limited to just 14 states, has prompted cautious optimism among some…
These days, it’s hard to stop news from Washington, D.C., from flooding your news feed. We take a moment every week to bring you important stories beyond the White House and the Capitol. Here’s what we’re reading now.
The investigation by Missouri's Sen. Claire McCaskill sheds light on the opioid industry's ability to shape public opinion and raises questions about its role in an overdose epidemic that has claimed hundreds of thousands of American lives.
