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Drug overdose deaths spiked almost 22 percent in New Jersey last year, the state Medical Examiner’s Office reported Wednesday, largely due to opioids including heroin and fentanyl. The finding is almost identical to the 23 percent increase in deaths in Pennsylvania that the local division of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration reported several months ago. In some ways, however, the latest data are even more disturbing: While Pennsylvania overdoses have been rising annually for more than a decade, and now far exceed the national average, in New Jersey they had held steady for a couple of years and even seemed to be declining slightly. National data are not available yet, but a number of other states had also experienced plateaus in drug deaths that turned out to be temporary. (Sapatkin, 12/7)

Six months ago, though, Hunter, a mother of three, hit a turning point. She was ready to make a change. That’s when she entered the Newark Addiction Recovery Initiative program. The program, announced in June by Police Chief Barry Connell, was based on the Angel Program started by the Gloucester, Massachusetts, Police Department last year. (Smola, 12/7)

President-elect Donald Trump will soon announce the selection of retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly to lead the Department of Homeland Security, The Washington Post has confirmed. Kelly served as the head of the U.S. Southern Command, a posting that gave him oversight of U.S. security operations for Central America, the Caribbean and the entirety of South America. Trump settled on Kelly in part for his Southwest border expertise, according to people familiar with the deliberations. In that role, Kelly grappled with issues relating to the international illicit drug trade and the flow of narcotics, including heroin and cocaine, from countries in the Southern Hemisphere to markets in the United States. (Ingraham, 12/7)