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Bubbly and athletic, Heather Padgett, raised in a loving family in the Cincinnati suburbs, would not fit the stereotype of a heroin addict. But the 28-year-old former administrative assistant's addiction was so bad, she used heroin while pregnant. Her twin girls were born nine months ago while she was in treatment, and they suffered tremors from withdrawal. Until she got clean last August, she was part of what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called a heroin epidemic - a 100 percent rise in heroin addiction among Americans between 2002 and 2013. The sharp rise in heroin addiction, coupled with the risks of newborns developing withdrawal symptoms after they are sent home, has led a group of Cincinnati hospitals to try what they say is the first program of its kind in the United States: testing all mothers, or their infants, for opiates regardless of background, not just those who seem high-risk. (Wisniewski, 8/7)

About 30 party guests wearing suits and summer dresses mingled in the candlelit back yard of a small, private home in the Forest Hills neighborhood in Northwest Washington and snacked on hors d’oeuvres to the sound of jazz. Instead of cocktails, they sipped gourmet coffee and tea infused with marijuana. (Gurciullo and Mawdley, 8/9)

John W. Huffman is his name. But he is better known by his initials: JWH. In the world of synthetic drugs, few letters carry greater notoriety. They have materialized on thousands of advertisements selling what are known as synthetic cannabinoids or marijuana. And government authorities have banned nine JWH substances, making him arguably the nation’s most prolific inventor of outlawed synthetic marijuana. Huffman’s compounds, experts say, laid some of the earliest groundwork for what has become a scourge of cheaply made, mass-produced synthetic drugs wreaking havoc in the District and beyond. (McCoy, 8/9)