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The Obama administration has announced that it will spend $17 million to help law enforcement agencies deal with the increase in heroin and opioid abuse. At the same time, the administration is using the announcement to encourage Congress to meet President Barack Obama's call for $1.1 billion in new funding to help states expand access to treatment. (8/17)

The Obama administration on Wednesday announced it would provide $17 million to a handful of states considered to be high intensity drug trafficking areas to strengthen efforts to disrupt the spread of drugs. The funding will expand the heroin response strategy for high-intensity areas in Atlanta and the Carolinas, Michigan and Ohio. Of that funding, $5.6 million will go toward 13 projects to disrupt the trafficking of prescription opioids, fentanyl and heroin, as well as training providers on safe prescribing practices and on how to distribute naloxone, a drug that can reverse an opioid overdose, the Office of National Drug Control Policy said in a release. (McIntire, 8/17)

Officials in a West Virginia city are warning people about an especially dangerous batch of heroin after authorities responded to 26 overdoses in within a four-hour span. The rash of overdoses came Monday in the city of Huntington, which sits in Cabell County along the Ohio River in the western part of the state. Gordon Merry, the county's EMS director, said at a news conference Tuesday that the heroin the users had taken was laced with a strong substance, but authorities aren't sure what it is. (8/17)

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports that police in Huntington, W.Va., responded to 26 heroin overdose cases in a span of four hours on Monday evening. To get a sense of the scale of the outbreak, consider this: Huntington is a small city with a population of about 49,000 people, according to the Census Bureau. An overdose outbreak of similar magnitude in New York City (population 8.4 million) would affect more than 4,400 people. The cases overwhelmed first responders in Huntington. (Ingraham, 8/17)

What if you could design a drug that has all the pain-relieving power of morphine but none of its dangerous or addictive side effects? Scientists have spent years trying to do just that, and on Wednesday, they unveiled one of their most promising compounds yet — a chemical concoction they dubbed “PZM21.” When tested in mice that were placed on a hot surface, PZM21 offered nearly as much pain relief as morphine and lasted for up to three hours. That’s “substantially longer” than morphine or other experimental drugs, the scientists wrote in the journal Nature. (Kaplan, 8/17)

Now scientists are trying to create opioid painkillers that give relief from pain without triggering the euphoria, dependence and life-threatening respiratory suppression that causes deadly overdoses. That wasn't thought possible until 2000, when a scientist named Laura Bohn found out something about a protein called beta-arrestin, which sticks to the opioid receptor when something like morphine activates it. When she gave morphine to mice that couldn't make beta-arrestin, they were still numb to pain, but a lot of the negative side effects of the drug were missing. They didn't build tolerance to the drug. (Chen, 8/17)

The main cause of opioid overdose is respiratory suppression, but researchers have identified a compound that mimics commonly used drugs’ painkilling effects and lacks that lethal characteristic. In a collaborative study, scientists at multiple U.S. universities found the drug candidate PZM21, which was tested in mice, resembles morphine and other drugs like it, but may be less addictive. The compound could one day help reduce the nearly 30,000 drug overdose deaths from respiratory suppression that occur annually in the United States, they argued. (Fox News, 8/17)

An online drug-tracking program aimed at curbing abuse of opioids and other prescription drugs is slated to launch Monday, but many health care providers still haven’t registered to use the system, prompting an urgent call to action Wednesday from the statewide physician’s association. The president of the Massachusetts Medical Society said the state’s new prescription monitoring program is critical in helping stem the region’s opioid crisis. It will help prescribers learn whether patients are visiting several offices, known as doctor shopping, to accumulate opioid drugs, he said. (Lazar, 8/17)

Health advocates hope to “turn the tide” on the drug crisis by encouraging candidates and local and state officials to support a new five-point plan, including making Medicaid expansion permanent. New Futures launched the accountability initiative at a news conference Tuesday attended by substance abuse experts, counselors, legislators, recovering addicts and police. The other goals are restoring the state’s alcohol fund, investing in evidence-informed prevention programs, advancing behavioral health workforce development, and removing barriers to insurance coverage. (Tuohy, 8/16)

Advocates, first responders, and local and federal lawmakers say the state has made great strides in combating an opioid crisis, but much more still needs to be done.  At two press conferences in Concord Tuesday, the focus was on efforts at the state and federal levels both past and future. (Sutherland, 8/17)