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Seven U.S. senators sharply criticized the Drug Enforcement Administration on Wednesday for failing to answer questions about enforcement actions against pharmaceutical companies accused of violating laws designed to prevent painkillers from reaching the black market. (Higham and Bernstein, 1/18)

At the lab, run by the Drug Enforcement Agency, chemists are analyzing these drugs and trying to identify them. More and more, they’re discovering new, deadlier varieties of opioids concocted overseas and sold on the street in the US. As the chemical compositions of these drugs are manipulated, they can become far more powerful. Fentanyl, a common synthetic opioid, is up to 100 times more potent than morphine and many times that of heroin. (Hogan, 1/19)

Insys Therapeutics Inc. of Chandler, Ariz., will pay the state $2.9 million to settle allegations that it aggressively marketed its opioid Subsys, a fentanyl spray approved for cancer patients, to New Hampshire residents. Additionally, it will pay $500,000 to the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation to be used for preventing and remediating problems related to abuse, misuse or misprescribing of opioid drugs in the state. The settlement comes as New Hampshire struggles with the highest per-capita fentanyl death rate in the country. As of Dec. 12, 2016, 369 people died from drug overdoses and 269 of them, or 72 percent, involved fentanyl. (Grossmith, 1/18)

The former chief of staff of the Tomah Veterans Affairs Medical Center has agreed to permanently surrender his license to practice medicine in Wisconsin, closing a two-year investigation into his narcotic prescription practices. The VA had already fired David Houlihan, after he was exposed as the “Candy Man” in a January 2015 investigation from Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. We reported that veterans treated at the Tomah VA showed up to appointments stoned on painkillers and muscle relaxants, dozed off and drooled during therapy sessions, and burned themselves with cigarettes. (Glantz, 1/18)