By Eric Levitz Between 1999 and 2013, the death rate for white, middle-aged, working-class Americans increased by 22 percent. This explosion in premature deaths was driven by a surge in opioid overdoses, alcohol-related fatalities, and suicides. Meanwhile, over the same period, medical advances pushed down the death rates of college-educated whites, and the working-class members of other racial [...]

By Lenny Bernstein and Christopher Ingraham American life expectancy at birth declined for the second consecutive year in 2016, fueled by a staggering 21 percent rise in the death rate from drug overdoses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday. The United States has not seen two years of declining life expectancy since 1962 and 1963, when [...]

By Korey Lane Being a parent is a beautiful and terrifying thing, as just about any parent will tell you. And now, this dad is warning other parents after his daughter's tragic death, which he says was totally preventable. Because, unfortunately, life can change in the blink of an eye, and even the most responsible of parents or [...]

By Anthony Vecchione India pharmaceutical giant Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, recently settled a case with the U.S. Justice Department regarding prescription drug packaging that had not undergone proper testing for child safety, as required by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. In a statement, the company said that, while it disagreed with the allegations, “in order to [...]

It’s hard to say whether businessman Kyle Graves hit rock bottom when he shot himself in the ankle so emergency room doctors would feed his opioid habit or when he broke into a safe to steal his father’s cancer pain medicine. For straight-talking ex-trucker Jeff McCoy, it was when he grabbed a gun and threatened [...]

By Adam Walser PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - Florida is ground zero for the opioid crisis, with more than 5,000 overdose deaths a year. Methadone, which is a drug used to reduce withdrawal symptoms, is one treatment option. But a local doctor tells the ABC Action News I-Team he believes the clinic where he used to [...]

By Katie Zezima More than two dozen patients were rushed into an emergency room in Macon, Ga., over two days with the same array of life-threatening symptoms, including organ failure and sepsis, flummoxing doctors. But after their breathing tubes were removed, the patients revealed a common thread: All had taken what they believed were Percocet pills [...]

By Mike Stobbe NEW YORK — While declaring the opioid crisis a national public health emergency Thursday, President Donald Trump said: “Nobody has seen anything like what’s going on now.” He was right, and he was wrong. Yes, this is the most widespread and deadly drug crisis in the nation’s history. But there has been a [...]

By Christine Vestal In the summer of 2016, drug overdose deaths in Baltimore were exploding and health commissioner Dr. Leana Wen told federal Drug Enforcement Administration officials the city needed real-time data to better manage its public health response. Four months later, the DEA’s Washington/Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) team had developed a smart [...]

By Melissa Healy n an opioid epidemic that currently claims an average of 91 lives per day, there have been many paths to addiction. For some, it started with a fall or a sports injury, a trip to a nearby emergency room and a prescription for a narcotic pain reliever that seemed to work well [...]