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Senator Joe Manchin stepped onto the Senate floor last week to read a letter sent to him by Leigh Ann Wilson, a home caregiver whose 21-year-old daughter, Taylor, died from an opioid overdose last fall. “Please work quickly to prevent thousands of other Taylors from the same fate,” Manchin read. That was just the latest of many such letters that Manchin, a Democrat, has read on the Senate floor over the past year. He represents West Virginia, which has the highest rate of drug overdose deaths in the nation. And he seeks to amplify the voices of those most affected. (Blau, 3/27)

The family of a New Jersey woman who died after using a prescription version of the potent opioid fentanyl filed a wrongful death lawsuit Thursday against the drug’s maker, her doctor, and a specialty pharmacy that provided the drug. The lawsuit, filed in a New Jersey state court, alleges 32-year-old Sarah Fuller was the victim of a nationwide push by Insys Therapeutics to entice doctors to prescribe its Subsys fentanyl spray for patients for which the drug was not suitable. (Armstrong, 3/24)

With two weeks left before the end of Maryland’s 2017 legislative session, lawmakers are rushing to pass a package of bills aimed at combating the heroin and opioid epidemic that a new Washington Post-University of Maryland poll shows is touching about one-third of state residents. (Hicks, 3/26)

A New Hampshire physician's assistant was arrested Friday by federal agents on allegations he received kickbacks for prescribing large amounts of an opioid painkiller. According to officials, Clough was the state's top prescriber of a fentanyl spray called Subsys. (Rodolico, 3/24)

The number of Ohio babies who come into the world sick and craving drugs continues to soar. New state reports show that the rate of neonatal abstinence syndrome — the medical term for withdrawal symptoms suffered by newborns — jumped to 159 per 10,000 live births in 2015. That's more than eight times the rate a decade earlier, in 2005, when there were just 19 such hospitalizations for every 10,000 live births. (Price, 3/27)

A decades-long trend of economic stagnation and social immobility may be to blame for a shocking increase in death rates among middle-aged white Americans, a new study finds, as the number of deaths caused by drugs, alcohol abuse and suicide reaches levels not seen in generations. For nearly a century, advances in medical technology and healthy living have sent mortality rates of all Americans plummeting. But in recent years, a stark divide has emerged along educational and racial lines: as death rates plunge for minorities and well-educated whites, the number of whites without a college education dying in middle age is skyrocketing. (Wilson, 3/25)