�鶹Ů��

When Joyce A. Rivera decided in 1990 to confront the AIDS epidemic that had claimed her brother’s life, she teamed up with unlikely allies: two drug dealers in the South Bronx. First, she educated them on how dirty needles and unprotected sex spread H.I.V., which causes AIDS. Then, she wound up distributing clean syringes to their customers in Mott Haven. ... Back then, her needle exchange program — St. Ann’s Corner of Harm Reduction — operated on the fringes of an impoverished minority community. The public saw her efforts as enabling drug users who would be better off behind bars. Today, her methods are viewed as part of an effective public health strategy that prevents the spread of disease and offers addicts help. (Gonzalez, 4/17)

Pain is the most common reason that people go to the doctor. Yet physicians and medical students have limited training in pain management and prescribing opioids. As the nation suffers from an opioid epidemic, people within the medical field are reexamining what doctors are taught about pain. NewsHour Weekend's Christopher Booker reports. (4/17)

Heroin pills. That’s how Andrew Kolodny describes oxycodone, one of the most widely prescribed – and abused – narcotic painkillers in the U.S. Kolodny is executive director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing and senior scientist at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. He joined The Exchange this week to discuss the opioid crisis – its origins and how states, including New Hampshire, are trying to overcome it. (4/15)

Jessica had been hooked on heroin for two years when she found out she was 41/2 months pregnant. Shortly afterward, while in prison, she decided to start taking methadone to treat her addiction. She had been told if she quit cold turkey, she had a higher chance of miscarrying. But she was also told her baby would go through withdrawal once he or she was born because of the exposure to methadone, which — like heroin — is an opioid. (Rigg, 4/17)

The first time Ann Stanton stole drugs, she says, came after she watched one of her patients die in intensive care. Feeling responsible, she pocketed pain medication intended for an elderly patient soon after, setting off a six-month run of stealing that didn't end until she was caught in a hospital bathroom injecting a drug often used to treat anxiety disorders. (Godar, 4/17)

Authorities in Culpeper County, Va., recorded 11 heroin overdoses in the first 12 days of the month. Then, on Wednesday, three happened in the span of a day. Sheriff Scott H. Jenkins said investigators suspect a stronger-than-normal heroin — or one that is mixed with a synthetic opioid — is to blame. “I ask citizens to be alert to the symptoms of heroin use,” he said in a press release. “If you have friends or family that you suspect may be abusing heroin, or might abuse heroin, talk to them about this dangerous drug on the streets now.” (St. Martin, 4/15)

There are signs that deaths connected to fentanyl, a powerful painkiller tied to a string of fatal overdoses in Northern California, are on the rise in the Los Angeles area, law enforcement and health officials said this week. The drug, an opiate used on patients after surgery that’s up to 100 times stronger than morphine, is appearing now more than ever in overdoses in California as a prescription drug abuse epidemic evolves nationwide. (Serna, 4/16)

To Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, the salient issue raised in Wisconsin by the nation's heroin and opioid epidemic is one of public safety. "Our borders are not secure," said Johnson, who as chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Government Affairs held a field hearing on Friday at Waukesha County Technical College. (Stephenson, 4/15)

Deaths from opioid drug overdoses have hit epidemic proportions nationwide. In March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the first time urged doctors to avoid prescribing opiate painkillers for chronic pain, warning that the risks outweighed the benefits for most people. (Collins, 4/18)

Connecticut officials are planning to expand methadone treatment to prisoners across the state over the next year or so, in what authorities believe would be the first statewide program in the country to use the drug to help prisoners avoid harsh withdrawal symptoms and overdoses. (Collins, 4/17)

Growing up, as the searing pain of a sickle cell crisis would spread through her veins, Tanjila Bolden-Myers would ask her mother if this time, it would kill her. “I ask her now to this day, ‘Mom, how did you look me in my face and not break? Every time I asked you that?’” said Bolden-Myers, now 38. “And she was like, ‘No, baby, you’re not going to die this time. You’re not going to die.’” (Bouscaren and Hidalgo, 4/16)