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He slept next to his son's ashes most nights back when Kraig Moss first met Donald Trump. In a hall packed with Iowa voters, the presidential candidate looked the middle-aged truck driver in the eye and vowed to fight the opioid crisis that killed his only son two years earlier. (5/26)

It’s called being “dope sick” — when someone’s tired of getting high and no longer wants to spend the day searching for drugs. Addiction medicine physician Sarah Bagley sees kids who already have reached that stage... By the time they’re at the CATALYST Clinic at Boston Medical Center, a program designed to treat young people struggling with substance use, their lives have started to unravel. (Atoji Keene, 5/25)

Legislation to battle heroin and opioid overdoses in Maryland with education, prevention, treatment and law enforcement was signed into law Thursday by Gov. Larry Hogan. Matt and Cheryl Godbey, whose 24-year-old daughter Emily died in November from a fentanyl overdose, came from Frederick, Maryland, for the bill-signing ceremony. Matt Godbey applauded a new law that will bring stiffer penalties to drug dealers who knowingly sell fentanyl resulting in a death. Fentanyl is a painkiller that is often combined with heroin, with deadly results. (Witte, 5/25)

Cody Xiong cracked open his door, saw the investigator on his porch and 'fessed up, authorities say. “I guess,” Xiong said, “you are here for the opium.” The investigator wasn't. But suddenly, he was intrigued. What followed was a massive opium bust, based entirely on a North Carolina poppy grower who thought prematurely that the jig was up. (Wootson, 5/25)

Federal postal and State Department officials pushed back Thursday on a congressional proposal sponsored by Ohio U.S. Sen. Rob Portman to require advanced electronic tracking of all packages and large envelopes mailed to the United States .Portman and others in Congress say would help law enforcement stop deadly opiates from reaching dealers and users in a drug epidemic that last year killed 666 people in Cuyahoga County -- more than in homicides, suicides and car crashes. (Koff, 5/25)