The U.S. Food and Drug Administration should review the safety and effectiveness of all opioids, and consider the real-world impacts the powerful painkillers have, not only on patients, but also on families, crime and the demand for heroin. That’s the …
In a small study of opioid prescriptions filled at a Johns Hopkins Medicine outpatient pharmacy, researchers found that handwritten orders for the drugs contribute heavily to a trio of prescribing and processing errors in contrast to those created electronically. The …
Even doctors can be addicted to opioids, in a way: It’s hard to stop prescribing them. Melissa Jones is on a mission to break doctors of their habit, and in the process try to turn the tide of the painkiller …
A car crash shattered Stuart Anders’ thigh, leaving pieces of bone sticking through his skin. Yet Anders begged emergency room doctors not to give him powerful opioid painkillers – he’d been addicted once before and panicked at the thought of …
Lawmakers concerned about the plight of residents with chronic pain are considering softening a tough law that puts limits on how much opioid painkillers a doctor can prescribe. Maine has the nation’s strictest limit for opioid prescriptions, part of a …
Georgia lawmakers have reached a compromise on a bill that would require doctors to log into a pill-tracking database before prescribing painkillers and other high-risk drugs. The goal is to curtail the overprescribing of opioids. But critics say loopholes written …
The ease of relapsing into opioid addiction has led a growing number of states to help residents make it clear to medical professionals they do not want to be prescribed the powerful painkillers. Connecticut and Alaska are two of the …
Pennsylvania’s avalanche of opioids that rolled from factories through pharmacies to medicine cabinets, and then tumbled into the streets with tragic results, may finally be slowing thanks to pressure on the prescribing practices of its doctors. This year, the long-lagging …
Drug wholesalers shipped 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to West Virginia in just six years, a period when 1,728 people fatally overdosed on these two painkillers, according to an investigation by the Charleston Gazette-Mail. That amounts to 433 of …
West Virginia’s Board of Pharmacy plans to ask prescription drug wholesalers to report pharmacies placing suspiciously large orders of painkillers or other controlled substances. The board plans to forward those reports to state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey’s office, which last …