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Centers in Maryland providing treatment to people with heroin and other opioid addictions will share in close to $9 million in federal grants aimed at reining in the still-raging epidemic, the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration announced Thursday. The latest round of funding will go to community health centers, rural organizations and the University of Maryland, and officials said they expect the grants to boost the number of people on medication-assisted treatment, which includes treatment with drugs such as buprenorphine and methadone that ease withdrawal symptoms and curb cravings. (Cohn, 8/8)

Waverly Willis didn’t hesitate to say yes when the Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board of Cuyahoga County asked him to hand out free fentanyl test strips at his Urban Kutz barbershops. He knew that for some drug users, the test strips could mean the difference between life and death. The test strips let users test drugs such as cocaine to determine if they’ve been mixed with fentanyl, the powerful opioid that has been a factor in a lion’s share of deaths in recent years in Northeast Ohio and elsewhere in the U.S. (MacDonald, 8/8)

Residents have been complaining for weeks, documenting with photos and videos that people just outside their windows are dealing and injecting drugs, bathing in the fountains, having sex, and leaving feces on the curb. At the same time, residents expressed concern for the homeless, and some speakers at a community meeting Wednesday expressed outrage over the seizure of wheelchairs during a police operation this week. (Freyer, Valenica and McDonald, 8/8)