Drug overdose deaths in the Alle-Kiski Valley are on pace to eclipse totals from the past two years.  In the first six months of this year, county coroners say almost 200 people in the four-county area have died as a result of illegal or prescription drug overdoses...(Times Tribune)

According to the Pennsylvania DUI Association, the number of people driving under the influence of alcohol is going down, but the number of people driving under the influence of drugs is going up. The number of DUI drug arrests in Pennsylvania has nearly tripled from 5,529 in 2004 to 16,564 in 2013...(WHTM)

An increasing number of states grant immunity in such cases, to encourage calls to 911. They also allow first responders as well as friends and family to carry the overdose-reversal medication Narcan.  Pennsylvania does neither. New Jersey does both....(Philadelphia Inquirer)

Drug overdose deaths could set a record this year in Westmoreland County, where heroin has again surpassed prescription painkillers as the leading cause, Coroner Ken Bacha said...(Times Tribune)

Pennsylvania is moving into a leadership position. In fact, Pennsylvania is now in the top 10 in the nation. Just last week we learned from the newspapers that Pennsylvania moved from 14th to 7th place in drug overdose deaths....(York Dispatch)

(Rhode Island) The Providence Police Department, the largest police force in the state, has been trained and equipped to use Narcan, which can act swiftly to reverse opioid overdoses, city officials announced Thursday....(Providence Journal)

Something that has come out of the increased awareness of heroin addiction is a newfound interest with the controversial drug naloxone that can reverse the side effects and overdoses of opioids. It is a right move that more states are giving police and first responders' access to this drug, but it is one that comes with a lot of controversy....(Huffington Post)

(New Jersey) Police and EMTs have already saved at least 60 lives with naloxone since April, underscoring the necessity and effectiveness of this public health intervention. Immediately equipping first-responders throughout the state will avoid many more needless overdose deaths....(NJ)

(California) Come Monday, the San Diego County Sheriff's Department will become the first law enforcement agency in California to carry an antidote that could save the lives of drug overdose victims...(NBC San Diego)

(Ohio) Narcan has been used by first responders in Columbiana County communities such as East Palestine and Columbiana, although basic-level first responders have only recently been authorized to administer the drug as a result of changes at the state level...(Salem News)

(New Hampshire) The report, released this week, ranks the Granite State third in the nation in the prescribing, per capita, of highly addictive painkillers that could be potentially abused...(Eagle Tribune)

(Maine) During one 24-hour period last week, the Eastern Maine Medical Center emergency department treated five patients who had overdosed on drugs.  Dr. Jack Nicolet, a physician who works in EMMC's emergency room, suspects they had all taken too much heroin, and likely heroin laced with the painkiller fentanyl, an opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin...(Bangor Daily News)

Powerful painkillers have been driving the nation's rising rate of overdose deaths, and now the government is singling out the states where doctors write the most prescriptions.

A second report released Tuesday spotlights how a crackdown in Florida led to hundreds fewer overdose deaths from prescription painkillers in just a few years...(NBC29)

(Massachusetts) The state ranked low, 41st nationally, for overall prescribing of opioids, which have become a major concern because of rising rates of abuse and overdose deaths. Long-acting pain medications such as OxyContin are only one of several types of opioids, which also include methadone, codeine, and hydrocodone....(Boston Globe)

An estimated more than one million US veterans take prescription opioids for pain, and nearly half of them use the drugs chronically, yet drugs to treat dependence on pain medicines fail to reach tens of thousands of veterans in need.
...(Human Rights Watch)

Wide state-by-state variations in how often U.S. doctors prescribe opioid pain killers underline the need for tighter regulations for "pain clinics" that dispense the potentially deadly drugs, particularly in Southern states, a federal agency said on Tuesday....(Reuters)

(Florida) Prescription drug overdose deaths in Florida fell sharply after the state began strengthening its prescribing laws and stepping up enforcement. Federal researchers said Tuesday that it was one of the first significant documented declines in the nation since the epidemic of prescription drug abuse took hold more than a decade ago....(New York Times)

(United Kingdom) Lightlake Therapeutics Inc., a biopharmaceutical company developing addiction treatments based on its expertise in opioid antagonists, announced today that it has signed an agreement with a commercial contract manufacturer to commence production of its naloxone-based opioid overdose reversal treatment....(Market Watch)

(Canada) The rate of fatal overdoses from opioids such as oxycodone and morphine has soared over the last 20 years as prescriptions for the addictive and highly potent painkillers have continued to rise, an Ontario study has found....(680 News)