This story follows Dr. Angela Gatzke-Plamann a family practice doctor who was confronted with the opioid crisis locally and is an example of what many rural areas in the US are having to do with limited pain and addiction services and instead take on themselves. 

A new analysis of overdose data shows when and where the three waves of drugs took hold.

Today’s meth is far more potent than earlier versions, but because it isn’t an opioid, many federal addiction treatment funds can’t be used to fight it.

Ben Westhoff, says fentanyl is now killing more Americans annually than any other drug in American history. Dealers are adding fentanyl to heroin and other drugs, and users often have no idea they're getting it or how much they may be using.

The judge presiding over the historic Oklahoma opioid trial will deliver his ruling Monday afternoon -- a decision that could have sweeping implications as other states and communities try to hold pharmaceutical companies responsible for the opioid epidemic.

Dr. Barry Schultz is serving 157 years in prison after he prescribed enough opioids for a prosecutor to call him one of Florida's "most notorious drug dealers." In this "60 Minutes" interview, Schultz says he's a scapegoat.

Travis Rieder, author of In Pain: A Bioethicist's Personal Struggle With Opioids, says none of the doctors who prescribed opioids for his waves of "fiery" pain taught him how to safely taper his use of the drugs when he wanted to quit.

America’s largest drug companies saturated the country with 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pain pills from 2006 through 2012 as the nation’s deadliest drug epidemic spun out of control, according to previously undisclosed company data released as part of the largest civil action in U.S. history

The opioid manufacturer Insys Therapeutics agreed to pay $225 million to settle federal criminal and civil charges that it illegally marketed a highly addictive fentanyl painkiller to doctors, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday.

One of the largest murder cases in Ohio history, involving a doctor accused of killing 25 patients, will hinge on his colleagues' cooperation and what they can offer up at trial, legal experts say. And what those former co-workers reveal may help shed light on something that has so far eluded investigators: a motive.

Washington Post provides a thorough examinination of America’s deadliest drug epidemic.

The United States attorney’s office in Manhattan accused Rochester Drug Cooperative of conspiring to distribute drugs and defraud the federal government. The company sold 143 million oxycodone pills in New York State between 2010 and 2018, the state says

A new poll by NPR and Ipsos finds a third of Americans have been touched directly by the deadly opioid epidemic that still kills more than 100 people every day. "One in three have been personally affected in some way, either by knowing someone who has overdosed or by knowing someone with an opioid addiction," said Mallory Newall, lead Ipsos researcher on the survey.

More than 20 years after the first uptick in opioid overdose deaths in the United States, two groups are pitted in a bitter tug of war around the causes of, and solutions to, the opioid epidemic. On one side are people pointing to overprescribing as the reason tens of thousands of Americans die each year from opioid overdose. On the other side are people concerned that efforts to constrain overprescribing are hurting Americans living with chronic pain.

Drug enforcement experts in San Diego are warning about a new, deadlier opioid on the streets -- Carfentanil.

Seizures of large quantities of fentanyl, a powerful and frequently deadly synthetic opioid, have become increasingly common in the San Diego area.  

A woman and her boyfriend were behind bars today after allegedly being caught transporting more than 20 kilograms of powdered fentanyl -- an illicit drug haul valued at $1.5 million -- on an Otay Mesa freeway.

These changes will provide expanded guidance to health care professionals on how to safely decrease the dose in patients who are physically dependent on opioid pain medicines when the dose is to be decreased or the medicine is to be discontinued.

Deaths from a synthetic opioid called fentanyl have been on the rise nationally, and last week’s findings from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show this could be the third wave of the nation’s opioid epidemic.Though the spike in death rates has largely affected the Northeast, the trend is starting to worry health experts in California, who are already taking precautions to reduce overdoses.

The University of Michigan recently released that young people ages 13- 30 are 2.7 times more likely to continue filling opioid prescriptions after surgery.