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Preston Grundy started drinking at 14 to escape from his depression. He soon moved on to marijuana, Xanax, Adderall and cocaine, smoking pot when he woke each day and snorting pills in the bathroom between classes. The Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, teen went to treatment, but quickly relapsed upon returning to school, where he had constant access to drug dealers. Now 18, Grundy has been clean for 17 months and will begin college this fall to study social work and chemical dependency counseling. He credits his switch to a recovery school, PEASE Academy in Minneapolis, which he attends with about 60 other teens trying to beat addiction and where he says he wouldn't be able to find drugs if he tried. (6/19)

As federal and state regulators rush to curtail access to drugs that have claimed thousands of lives, the rules they’ve enacted fall hard on people who legitimately need relief from pain. In an atmosphere of heightened concern about opioids, patients in pain face reluctant doctors, wary pharmacists, and the frequent demand to prove that they are not addicts. (Freyer, 6/18)

The Obama administration is pressing GOP leaders to devote more funding to the fight against addiction before Congress sends its major opioids bill to the president’s desk this summer. The head of the White House’s drug policy office, Michael Botticelli, joined Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan in a call to action Friday to approve a fully funded opioids bill — an approach that was backed by a majority of senators on the floor this week. (Ferris, 6/19)

Zac Talbott sees the irony of running an opioid treatment program from a former doctor's office. ... Outpatient clinics like the one Talbott co-owns dispense drugs like methadone and buprenorphine, which are legal synthetic opioids that block cravings and withdrawal symptoms. ... More than 1,200 people died of an overdose in Georgia in 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with opioid drugs frequently implicated in those deaths. That's a 10 percent increase over the previous year. So Talbott is outraged that Georgia has put a one-year moratorium on issuing licenses to clinics that use medicine to treat people addicted to heroin or painkillers. "We're in the middle of an opioid addiction and overdose epidemic," Talbott said. "You just think about that for a minute." (Eloy, 6/20)

The U.S. Senators representing Missouri and Illinois are playing an active role in congressional efforts to combat the opioid epidemic. Roy Blunt (R-MO), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Dick Durbin (D-Ill) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill) all voted for the popular Comprehensive Addiction Recovery Act known as CARA. (Phillips, 6/20)

A Wisconsin convenience store owner who said he has lost more than 30 customers to overdoses is speaking out against the heroin epidemic by posting signs on his store warning of the dangers of drugs. Dick Hiers said he posted the signs to raise awareness about the problem, Sheboygan Press Media reported. Hiers has posted about a dozen different signs on the Northeast Standard BP station in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, including "Heroin is killing people — help wanted" and "Wake up! Your kids are dying — heroin." (6/19)

As New Hampshire stares down a heroin and opioid crisis, corrections officials and lawmakers are seeking new ways to keep drugs out of jail cells as visitors and inmates continually find ways to smuggle them in. While drugs in jails have always been an issue, officials say the present crisis is bringing new challenges and, at some facilities, a higher volume of drugs. (6/19)