Prescription Opiates

It may soon be harder for patients to get access to hydrocodone-based pain relievers like Vicodin after an FDA advisory panel recommended moving them from Schedule III to Schedule II in an effort to prevent overdoses and addiction.

Opium -- boon, bane, or both? We review three recent books on various aspects of the poppy and its derivatives.

Your elderly wife dies of cancer at home with you at her side, and before her body is even cold, the cops are there demanding her pain pills. What do you do? A Utah man is suing the police who did it and the city they work for.

Naloxone has already reversed some 10,000 opioid drug overdoses, and a new study suggests its wider distribution could save thousands more at a very low cost.

New Jersey will become the ninth state to enact a Good Samaritan drug overdose prevention law -- if Gov. Christie signs it into law.

A couple of dozen House members have introduced a bill aimed at reducing the steadily climbing toll from drug overdoses, most of them from prescription opioid pain relievers, by providing federal support for state and local prevention and education programs, including expanded use of naloxone.

The 2012 National Drug Control Strategy is out. It looks much like the 2010 strategy or the 2005 strategy or the 2000 strategy. There are a few new wrinkles, but nothing much has changed.

If grand jury indictments earlier this month are any indication, there's not enough real crime in Pitt County, North Carolina, to keep cops and prosecutors busy. The most common grand jury charge: possessing marijuana with intent.

The DEA went a step too far when it tried to shut down a pair of Florida CVS pharmacies, a federal appeals court has ruled. The ruling is only temporary, though, so stay tuned.

Delegates to the UN's Commission on Narcotic Drugs have voted unanimously to endorse overdose prevention measures, including the use of the overdose reversal drug naloxone.