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President Trump this month declared the opioid epidemic a national emergency, a move intended to direct more funding and attention toward the crisis. Recent research on hospitalizations related to opioid use depicts a problem of increasing urgency. According to a series of government briefs published this year, nearly 1.3 million hospitalizations involving opioids occurred in the United States in 2014. The figure includes hospitalizations for abuse of both prescription and illegal drugs, including heroin. (Yin, 8/21)

China has been an "incredible partner" in cracking down on synthetic opioids seen as fueling fast-rising overdose deaths in the United States, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said Monday during a visit to the country considered the source of many of the deadly substances sought by addicts. Price said China has been quick to respond when regulators identify a threat from a dangerous drug such as fentanyl, the powerful opioid blamed for thousands of fatal overdoses, including the death of entertainer Prince. (Bodeen, 8/21)

Nothing seemed to help the patient — and hospice staff didn’t know why. They sent home more painkillers for weeks. But the elderly woman, who had severe dementia and incurable breast cancer, kept calling out in pain. The answer came when the woman’s daughter, who was taking care of her at home, showed up in the emergency room with a life-threatening overdose of morphine and oxycodone. It turned out she was high on her mother’s medications, stolen from the hospice-issued stash. (Bailey, 8/22)

A study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine says that opioid overdose deaths have been under-reported across the country, including in Kansas and Missouri. University of Virginia researcher Christopher Ruhm analyzed death certificates from 2016 and 2017, looking for overdose deaths in which the drug that caused the death was not specified. (Marso, 8/21)

Nearly $1 million in state grants to fight opioid addiction will go before the Executive Council for approval on Wednesday, including $200,000 for Serenity Place in Manchester and $200,000 for Harbor Homes in Nashua to keep the Safe Station programs operating in the state’s two largest cities. The Department of Health and Human Services will ask the Executive Council on Wednesday to approve no-bid contracts with the two recovery services, retroactive to June 30. (Solomon, 8/22)

Afederal committee will meet in three weeks to consider whether cough medicine containing certain opioids should be prescribed to children, the Food and Drug Administration announced Monday. The agency already warned in April that drugs containing codeine, which is an opiate, “should not be used to treat pain or cough” in children under 12. The warning must appear on those drugs’ labels. At the time, the agency said that codeine, along with tramadol, an opioid found in some pain medications for children, “carry serious risks, including slowed or difficult breathing and death, which appear to be a greater risk in children younger than 12 years.” (Swetlitz, 8/21)