The nation's top addiction scientist has teamed up with a prominent artist to let people know that substance use disorder is a disease, not a moral failure.
Researchers say cocaine, meth and other street drugs are increasingly contaminated with deadly synthetic opioids, contributing to a major spike in deaths.
Derek Chauvin's defense has suggested George Floyd's drug use might have made him more "volatile" and unpredictable, justifying the use of force. Critics say Floyd needed health care and compassion.
Black Americans with addiction face "pervasive and continuing systemic racism" and often struggle to gain access to treatments that prevent fatal overdoses.
Many drug rehab programs use aggressive sales techniques, price-gouge patients and provide substandard care. The system often pushes people struggling with addiction into debt, but not recovery.
The Biden administration had Day One plans for the pandemic, economy and climate change. Experts say they haven't yet seen that same focus on the addiction crisis, which is killing 220 people a day.
President Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. called Biden "a crackhead." Researchers say that kind of humiliation puts many Americans with addiction at risk. Most people never get help because of shame.
As COVID-19 forced many addiction treatment clinics to scale back, Colorado brought its clinics on wheels to remote, underserved towns and used telehealth to connect patients with addiction doctors.
The disruption in the illegal opioid trade had varying impacts around the country. As stay-at-home orders lift, that creates different risks of overdose that public health is trying to manage.
When patients need long-term treatment with IV antibiotics, hospitals usually let them do it at home — but not if they have a history of injection drug use. A Boston program wants to change that.