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A company that sells a new opioid-addiction medication is a secret funder of an advocacy group fronted by Newt Gingrich and Patrick Kennedy that is pushing for more government funding and insurance coverage of such treatments. Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker and a Trump confidant, and Kennedy, a former congressman and son of former US Senator Edward Kennedy, are paid advisors to Advocates for Opioid Recovery. They have generated a flurry of media attention in those roles, including joint interviews with outlets ranging from Fox News to the New Yorker. (Armstrong, 3/3)

California is looking to impose a surcharge on prescription opioids to fund treatment for addicts. The move in such a large state could have a ripple effect through the rest of the country dealing with spiking rates of overdoses. The proposed measure introduced Wednesday by California Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, of Sacramento, would place a one-cent-per-milligram tax on prescription opioids. Prescription opioid wholesalers would be responsible for paying the tax, but it is likely those charges would fall onto the shoulders of insurers and consumers. (Johnson, 3/3)

More doctors than ever in the United States are armed with a medication scientifically proven to fight the heroin and opioid epidemic. Yet many don't prescribe it to as many patients as they are authorized to help. Research published in the American Journal of Public Health in June 2015 found that 43 percent of potential patients who could have received the drug were not offered it. And while more doctors are asking to prescribe the drug in 2017, experts worry that the gap – the one between those who qualify for the drug and those who actually get it  – is not being addressed. (DeMio, 3/5)

All too often, however, [Camile] Paglia and her staff are forced to tell patients just saved from overdosing that there are no beds in the rehab system for them. Many return to Episcopal the next day and the next, hoping for better news. Others go back to the needle right away; they need walk only a short distance to what law enforcement considers the biggest open-air drug market on the East Coast. Some don't survive the night — police have found the bodies of addicts, still wearing hospital wristbands, out near the tracks. (Giordano, 3/5)

In an effort to curtail the number of deaths in St. Charles County related to heroin and opioid use, the county ambulance district has created a program to help addicts gain immediate access to rehabilitation programs. Meanwhile, the parents of a young woman who died of a heroin overdose in O’Fallon, Mo., last year are planning their own crusade nearly 100 miles southwest of there in St. James to save others from a tragic fate that officials say is becoming increasingly common. Ambulance district data show calls concerning overdoses from heroin and opioids — a group of drugs that includes highly addictive prescription painkillers like oxycodone — have increased steadily since 2008, and ratcheted up noticeably after 2013. Calls increased from about 300 in 2014 to a record of about 425 last year. (Lisenby, 3/5)

New Hampshire providers say the insurance department’s examination of how the state’s top three insurance carriers cover treatment for substance misuse is "a good start." But they say the long-awaited report, released last week, doesn’t fully answer the real question: Are insurers abiding by state and federal “parity” laws that require them to cover mental health services the same way they cover medical and surgical treatments? (Wickham, 3/5)

Boston Medical Center has received a $25 million gift, the largest in its history, and plans to use the money to fight what it calls the “heartbreaking” public health crisis caused by drug addiction and the opioid epidemic. The donation to BMC, which serves more low-income patients than any other medical facility in New England, will create the Grayken Center for Addiction Medicine, named after billionaire investor and South Shore native John Grayken and his wife, Eilene. (Pfeiffer, 3/6)

While much of the recent attention on drug abuse in the United States has focused on the heroin and opioid epidemic, cocaine has also been making a comeback. It appears to be a case of supply driving demand. After years of falling output, the size of Colombia’s illegal coca crop has exploded since 2013, and the boom is starting to appear on U.S. streets. (Miroff, 3/4)