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Before hospitals in the rest of the country started seeing a surge in the number of infants born with severe drug withdrawal symptoms, this town of 50,000 was already facing a crisis. In 2010, babies born to mothers using heroin were filling up so many beds in the newborn intensive care unit at the city’s main hospital that little space was left for babies with other life-threatening conditions. The nurses who cared for these agitated and often inconsolable infants knew there was a better and less costly way to help newborns through the painful, weekslong process of drug withdrawal. (10/5)

On July 21, 2016, an FBI agent listened to the recording of a phone call between Dr. Shannon Ceasar, a family practice physician in Metairie, and a confidential federal informant. ... By then, the FBI, the DEA and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had been monitoring Ceasar for a year and a half. Multiple sources told investigators that the doctor handed out painkiller prescriptions in exchange for sex or cash payments. In a sworn affidavit, Peter Silessi, a special agent with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said at least two people who received opioid painkillers from Ceasar later died of drug overdoses. (Lipinski, 10/4)