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Overdoses don't happen just to heroin addicts — patients who legally use strong painkillers called opioids are at risk in the nation's epidemic, too. A new study says when patients were prescribed an overdose antidote along with those medications, they made fewer painkiller-related visits to the emergency room. (Neergaard, 6/27)

A drug that is effective at reversing heroin overdoses isn’t just for street addicts — it should be routinely distributed to people taking prescription pain medications who may not appreciate their risk of accidental death, San Francisco public health officials said in a study released Monday. Doctors should consider regularly prescribing naloxone — a drug given by injection or nasal spray to counteract opioid overdoses — alongside narcotic pain medications, the study’s authors said. Naloxone, often sold under the brand name Narcan, has become increasingly popular as a way to reverse heroin overdoses among street users. (Allday, 6/27)

Medical schools nationwide are rethinking their training on opioids amid rising overdose deaths. Schools are taking action after critics said they had inadvertently contributed to addiction problems. Federal health experts say that physicians have been prescribing addictive opioid painkillers too often, and that poor training is frequently to blame. (Binkley, 6/28)

The medication “Vivitrol” is gaining traction as a tool in the fight against drug addiction. It’s a once-a-month injection that was approved as a treatment for opioid and alcohol users in 2010. A psychiatric hospital in Hampstead now prescribes the medication, and patients seem to show signs of improvement. (Zars, 6/27)

The chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture will meet with state and local leaders in the Tennessee-Virginia border region this week as federal agencies look for local partners to combat opioid abuse in hard-hit rural areas across the nation. "There is no silver bullet. I wish there were," Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said in an interview with The Tennessean. "If there was, we’d obviously be focused on it.” (Fletcher, 6/27)

Lawmakers in dozens of states took decisive action this year to stanch the flow of prescription pain drugs and help those addicted to them. ... But the new laws are not without controversy. In several Northeast states, doctors are balking at new limits on the number of pills hospital emergency departments, physicians, dentists or nurses can prescribe for acute pain. Prominent medical groups, including the American Medical Association, argue that doctors and patients, rather than lawmakers, should be able to balance the need for pain relief against the risk of addiction in individual cases. (Vestal, 6/28)

A toxic batch of heroin laced with fentanyl appears to have hit New Haven, with firefighters and cops rushing to rescue 16 different people who overdosed on drugs — at least two of them fatally — between 3:30 and 9:30 p.m. Thursday. “I don’t ever recall a day like this ever. I don’t think we’ve had this amount in a very, very long time,” said Assistant Fire Chief Matt Marcarelli. (Yaffe-Bellany and Bass, 6/24)

The Lake County Health Department announced Monday a federal grant will allow it to double the number of individuals the department can treat in its Medication Assisted Treatment program for opioid addiction over the next two years to try and stem a rise in overdose deaths. (Abderholden, 6/27)

Steve Diaz, an emergency medicine doctor at Augusta’s MaineGeneral Health, says he knows what patients want when they come to him in pain. Drugs. And preferably strong ones. ... And with abuse of prescription painkillers like OxyContin, methadone and Percocet soaring, the instinct, public health experts say, should be to say no. ... But [a] federal policy — a provision of the 2010 federal health law linking hospital payments to patient satisfaction surveys — may be complicating efforts to curb opioid prescribing as part of the nation’s effort to address the painkiller abuse epidemic. (Luthra, 6/28)