Pharmaceuticals

The DEA was—and is—ill-equipped to manage US opioid supply, according to a damning Justice Department report tracking the agency’s actions over the past 2 decades as the US addiction crisis escalated.   The DEA knew about the spiraling crisis in the 1990s, but on the agency…

As the massive opioid litigation plays out in US courts, there’s much to learn from 1990s tobacco settlements. States received “an extraordinary amount of money”—but hardly any of it went to improve public health.   Tobacco taxes and settlement funds from…

Before she died, Joshua Hunt’s grandmother’s painkillers began disappearing ever-more-quickly before his eyes, he writes.   The opioids were prescribed by the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium—a lifeline for many Native Alaskans, and a source of opioids that a…

Last night Purdue Pharma filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to move forward a settlement that would shield the Sacklers and the family firm from over 2,600 opioid lawsuits, The New York Times reports.

One of the most painful marks of the US opioid crisis is the lack of safe, evidence-based treatment options for the people trying to escape addiction’s stubborn grip. The first article in a must-read Vox series on addiction treatment includes the story of a South Burlington…

For months, Purdue Pharma has been negotiating a $10-12 billion settlement that would resolve some 2,000 lawsuits against the company, NBC News reported yesterday—a day after a landmark ruling against Johnson & Johnson for its role in Oklahoma’s opioid crisis.  

A judge ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay Oklahoma $572 million yesterday in a landmark ruling on the corporation’s role in the state’s opioid crisis, The New York Times reports.   Judge Thad Balkman lambasted the company for “false, misleading, and dangerous marketing…

This afternoon an Oklahoma judge will deliver a landmark ruling that will determine Johnson & Johnson's responsibility for the opioid epidemic in the state—to the tune of $17.2 billion in possible damages, CNN reports.  

As many as 250,000 newborns exposed to opioids in utero are caught in a legal tussle between lawyers seeking a separate trial for them and a judge who has rebuffed their requests. As a nationwide prescription opioid lawsuit heads to trial in a couple months in Ohio, lawyers…

In a new report and accompanying book, Brown University political scientist Peter Andreas lays out the inextricable relationship between war and psychoactive substances. Some examples: