Opioids and tobacco claimed the lives of 14,200 Indiana residents last year, costing the state $12.6 billion in healthcare expenses, lost productivity and other economic damages, two new reports say. The studies released last week by the Richard M. Fairbanks …
The makers of prescription painkillers have adopted a 50-state strategy that includes hundreds of lobbyists and millions in campaign contributions to help kill or weaken measures aimed at stemming the tide of prescription opioids, the drugs at the heart of …
Accidental overdoses aren’t the only deadly risk from using powerful prescription painkillers – the drugs may also contribute to heart-related deaths and other fatalities, new research suggests. Among more than 45,000 patients in the study, those using opioid painkillers had …
A crackdown on Florida’s “pill mills” – clinics dispensing large quantities of prescription painkillers often for cash-only and without proper medical examinations – appears to have dramatically reduced the number of overdose deaths in the state from these drugs and …
Overdoses of opioid pain medications frequently occur in people who aren’t chronic users with high prescribed opioid doses—the groups targeted by current opioid prescribing guidelines, reports a study in the August issue of Medical Care. The journal is published by …