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Shortly after he was born, tremors wracked Leopoldo Bautista's tiny body as he suffered through the pain of drug withdrawal — pain his mother understands. Samantha Adams is being treated with methadone for a heroin addiction, and she passed the methadone into Leopoldo's system. Sitting vigil with him at Norton Hospital, she tears up as she describes the 10-day-old "going through what I'd been through." Being born into suffering is becoming ever more common as research shows a continuing surge in drug-dependent infants amid a national epidemic of pain pill and now heroin abuse, with no end in sight. (Ungar, 7/8)

Medications that treat addiction – buprenorphine, methadone and a third named naltrexone -- are a cornerstone of the Obama administration's plan to combat the opiate epidemic. One consequence of the addiction epidemic: The death rate from drug overdoses more than doubled from 1999 to 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Drug overdoses now kill nearly 44,000 Americans a year – more than car accidents. Opiate addicts who are given such "medication-assisted treatment" cut their risk of death from all causes – from overdoses to car accidents – in half, said Melinda Campopiano, medical officer at the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (Szabo, 7/8)

America's heroin problem is getting worse. A new report from the Centers for Disease Control says that in just six years, heroin use has risen 150 percent to more than a half-million Americans. Over a decade, use by women alone is up 100 percent. The most innocent victims of drug abuse are babies. A newborn in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Tufts Medical Center in Boston was given morphine to ease his withdrawals. He was in the hospital for three weeks. The jerking movements this baby boy had were symptoms of opiate addiction. (Quijano, 7/8)

It’s easy to turn a blind eye to the current heroin epidemic the United States finds itself in. Most people are under the impression that no one close to them has a problem with addiction, no one close to them will ever have a problem with addiction, or people who have a trouble with addiction are a flaw in the human species. If only they knew how quickly and easily anyone can pick up a smack habit. A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that heroin use in the U.S. is only becoming more common among people with historically low drug abuse rates. (Caba, 7/8)

Here, there are no clinicians administering Suboxone or methadone. No requirements to participate in a 12-step program. No judgment, however, if you happen to be in one – or interested in joining. Instead, in this former pet store at the edge of Barre – a Vermont town of about 9,000 in the middle of rolling hills, a few miles away from the state capital – there’s a pool table and a communal kitchen. There are couches and a deck of cards. The walls and tables from the front entrance to the sprawling community room are lined with signs and brochures and other pamphlets about a free health shuttle, a cooking academy, a therapeutic yoga class, an adult education program, a list of resources for drug and alcohol addiction. There are a handful of staffers who sit ready to welcome whoever walks through the front door with a conversation about what help they might need and where they might be able to find it. There’s one part-time staffer, in particular, who serves as a bridge between this space and clinical treatment options for opiate addiction. (McDermott, 7/9)