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In the early days of OxyContin, Dr. Richard Sackler, a member of the billionaire family that founded and controls Purdue Pharma, learned about concerns that the potent opioid could lead to abuse in chronic pain patients, and he then proposed executives aggressively push back, according to newly unsealed documents obtained by STAT after a four-year court battle. ... Sackler urged a robust response, writing that the “addiction” objection could be “obliterated.” Specifically, he said executives should consider giving a “convincing presentation” that controlled-release products like OxyContin are “less prone to addiction potential, abuse or diversion” than other opioid pain pills. “I think that can be done,” he wrote, but deferred to the company’s experts about whether it could. (Ross, 12/2)

STAT’s multiyear legal battle to unseal secret Purdue Pharma files in a Kentucky court has produced dozens of documents that lay bare new details about the company’s marketing strategy and the role of Dr. Richard Sackler, a member of the family that founded and controls Purdue, in making OxyContin a top-selling pain pill. ... Below is a timeline of Purdue’s activities as revealed by the newly released documents (and some that were already public), and excerpts from those records. (Chakradhar and Ross, 12/3)

Soon after getting an OxyContin prescription for back pain and arthritis in 1999, disabled coal miner James P. Craig started popping three of the narcotic pills daily, instead of the prescribed two, he said in a deposition as part of a lawsuit against the drug’s manufacturer, Purdue Pharma. Within months, he said in the deposition, he was swallowing and crushing and snorting up to seven a day to satisfy his craving. When doctors stopped prescribing OxyContin, he said, he started buying the narcotic pain medication illegally. (Rowland, 12/2)

Veterans shattered by roadside bombs. Amputees. Motorists crushed in car crashes. People wracked by cancer. These are some of the pain patients flocking to Dr. John Downey’s medical office here.Downey watches them wince. He hears them moan. He sees them crying in his exam rooms as their nerves fire off dagger-like messages to their brains. The doctor faces a dilemma: He knows painkillers like oxycodone and hydrocodone will help. But he is concerned about the deadly risks amid the opioid abuse epidemic, a crisis that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and triggered lawsuits against drug manufacturers, distributors and physicians like him. (Redmon, 12/2)

A bill under consideration in the state Legislature would allow schools to obtain the drug naloxone, and let them train school staff members to administer it to students who they believe are suffering from overdoses. The proposal comes as the Miami-Dade County school board has sued the manufacturers and distributors of addictive pain medications. The district claims it has had to divert resources from the classroom to offer nursing and mental health care to students and staff who’ve been affected by opioid addiction. (Bakeman, 12/2)

There’s been much talk about drugs in Appalachia, particularly as opioids — first prescription pills, then heroin and its much deadlier cousin, fentanyl — tore through already distressed mountain communities. But even as state and federal agencies set their sights and budgets on ways to combat the opioid epidemic, another drug is wreaking havoc in Western North Carolina: methamphetamine. A stimulant that rose to national infamy in the 1990s and early 2000s, meth has been part of life here for years. Residents say that even as opioid misuse blossomed, meth never went away. (Engel-Smith, 12/3)