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The Biden administration on Monday will send a letter urging all schools to keep an opioid overdose reversal drug on hand and train staff and students on how to use it. The request is a response to the grim reality that opioid overdoses — particularly those involving illicit fentanyl — have risen rapidly among children and teenagers in recent years. (Owens, 10/30)

Asiyah Timimi, who runs a youth anti-violence program, said she was driving down New York Avenue when she saw a young man overdosing outside of a McDonalds. “I turned him on his side and he was just … the fluid was just pouring out,” Timimi said. “His friend didn’t have a clue what to do. He was punching him, dragging him, kicking him.” Elizabeth Stoll, a parent in Ward 5, said that in September, kids at her son’s preschool found fentanyl containers on the school grounds. “Toddlers, children in pre-K three and four, brought them home and into the classroom,” Stoll said. Stoll and Timimi were two of a dozen community organizers, doctors and health workers calling on the city to declare a public health emergency at a city council hearing Thursday. (Estulin, 10/27)

Officials with the Team Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet are reporting deaths in the state due to opioid overdoses have increased 8%. [But] the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet reports an 8% increase in opioid overdose deaths among Black Kentuckians. (Woods, 10/29)

California and San Francisco law enforcement officials plan to begin investigating some opioid overdose deaths in the city as homicides and expect to pursue murder charges against drug dealers starting next year, a major escalation of the government’s ongoing attempts to crack down on open-air drug markets. (Morris, 10/27)

White people who visit hospital emergency departments with pain are 26% more likely than Black people to be given opioid pain medications such as morphine. This was a key finding from our recent study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. We also found that Black patients were 25% more likely than white patients to be given only non-opioid painkillers such as ibuprofen, which are typically available over the counter. (Thompson and Stathi, 10/27)

The comic star appeared to have achieved sobriety-induced optimism – but drink and drug abuse takes its toll on the body, even in recovery. (Lytton, 10/30)

‘Friends’ star, who has died aged 54, was a prominent campaigner for drugs reform and spoke candidly about his own battles with substance abuse. (O'Connor, 10/29)