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After a season that saw the opioid-overdose death of a 27-year-old pitcher, Major League Baseball and the players’ union on Thursday announced that players will be tested for opioids and cocaine starting in spring training under an updated drug policy. The update to the drug policy takes a treatment-based approach, rather than a punitive one, as players will only be disciplined if they violate a prescribed treatment plan after a positive test. (Wagner, 12/12)

While MLB has long tested players for performance-enhancing drugs like anabolic steroids, under the previous protocol it could only test for opioids and other so-called drugs of abuse if it had “reasonable cause” to do so. Now all players will be subject to random testing for opioids, the drugs at the center of the public health crisis, as well as cocaine and synthetic THC. (Diamond and Radnofsky, 12/12)

Scientists who’ve studied the curious chemistry of the opioid tramadol use an array of adjectives to describe it: “unpredictable,” “messy,” “crazy.” Tramadol is unlike most other opioids in that it must pass through the liver to be metabolized into its most potent form. At the same time, it releases another type of drug that acts as an antidepressant because it increases levels of serotonin in the brain, which elevates mood. (12/13)

Reports rolled in with escalating urgency — pills seized by the truckload, pills swallowed by schoolchildren, pills in the pockets of dead terrorists. These pills, the world has been told, are safer than the OxyContins, the Vicodins, the fentanyls that have wreaked so much devastation. But now they are the root of what the United Nations named “the other opioid crisis” — an epidemic featured in fewer headlines than the American one, as it rages through the planet's most vulnerable countries. (12/13)

Kaiser Health News: In The Fight For Money For The Opioid Crisis, Will The Youngest Victims Be Left Out?

Babies born to mothers who used opioids during pregnancy represent one of the most distressing legacies of an opioid epidemic that has claimed almost 400,000 lives and ravaged communities. In fact, many of the ongoing lawsuits filed against drug companies refer to these babies, fighting through withdrawal in hospital nurseries.The cluster of symptoms they experience, which include tremors, seizures and respiratory distress, is known as neonatal abstinence syndrome, or NAS. Until recently, doctors rarely looked for the condition. (Farmer, 13/13)

An Ohio hospital doctor who pleaded not guilty to murder in 25 patients' deaths was unsuccessful in his latest bid to pause more than a dozen related lawsuits while the criminal case is pending. A state appeals court dismissed the appeals from William Husel and his former employer, the Columbus-area Mount Carmel Health System, for procedural reasons in the past two weeks. (12/12)

Admissions to addiction treatment programs in San Francisco have dropped by 20% over the past five years, even as drug use and overdose deaths have exploded, according to public health data published this week. Combined with recent reports of treatment center vacancies — on some nights, 1 in 4 beds is empty in San Francisco’s residential treatment facilities — the admissions data suggest that certain addiction programs are being underutilized at a time when the city is in a drug use crisis, some public health and elected officials say. (Allday, 12/12)