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U.S. prisons are experimenting with a high-priced monthly injection that could help addicted inmates stay off opioids after they are released, but skeptics question its effectiveness and say the manufacturer has aggressively marketed an unproven drug to corrections officials. A single shot of Vivitrol, given in the buttocks, lasts for four weeks and eliminates the need for the daily doses common with alternatives such as methadone. But each shot costs as much as $1,000, and because the drug has a limited track record, experts do not agree on how well it works. (Johnson, 11/14)

The Drug Enforcement Administration placed a synthetic opioid called U-47700 on the most restrictive list of controlled substances, calling the drug a threat to public health and blaming it in part for scores of deaths around the U.S. The ban, which is scheduled to take effect Monday, is the latest action by the DEA to try to crack down on the growing peril of synthetic narcotics. (Campo-Flores, 11/11)

Since the late 1990s, pastors, police, and mayors in Puerto Rico have been sending hundreds of heroin addicts, many of them HIV-positive, to Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and other cities. The officials work with mainland ministers, some of whom travel from Philadelphia to the island to recruit addicts, offering drug treatment based on abstinence and prayer....Once in Philadelphia, the drug users, who are overwhelmingly young men, are funneled into so-called recovery houses where they complain that pastors belittle them in rants imbued with religious overtones. (Lubrano, 11/13)