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More than a decade into the opioid epidemic, illicit fentanyl and related synthetic drugs are now driving the nation’s spiraling overdose death toll. Involved in nearly half of the roughly 200 U.S. drug overdose deaths every day, fentanyl appears to be here to stay. ...As governors in the hardest-hit New England, Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states call for intensified law enforcement efforts and stiffer penalties for fentanyl dealers, public health officials are saying this latest drug scourge underscores the urgent need to get more people into treatment, particularly those who use heroin. (Vestal, 10/17)

Rural Americans are preoccupied with the problems of opioid and drug addiction in their communities, citing it as a worry on par with concerns about local jobs and the economy, according to a new poll from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "For many years, the opioid crisis was seen as affecting only a few states — West Virginia, Kentucky and New Hampshire among others. But it never was just about those states," says poll co-director Robert J. Blendon, a professor of public health and health policy at Harvard. "It's now at the same level of a very serious economic plight that people are really worried about. It affects elections, and it affects how people elected from rural areas view their priorities." (Neel and Kodjak, 10/16)

First lady Melania Trump will travel to Philadelphia to meet with families of children who were affected by exposure to opioids while in the womb. Mrs. Trump is being joined on her Wednesday visit to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. The hospital has provided care to mothers with opioid use disorder and their newborn children for more than 45 years. (10/16)

Patients treated for opioid overdoses at two Oak Lawn hospitals are now leaving those facilities with medication that might save them the next time they overdose. Advocate Christ Medical Center and Advocate Children’s Hospital recently started sending home naloxone with patients who come to their emergency rooms with opioid overdoses or opioid addictions, and a number of other local hospitals are considering similar measures. Naloxone is used to block the effects of opioids during overdoses. (Schencker, 10/16)

The opioid addiction epidemic is expected to claim the lives of almost 300 people in Hillsborough County this year. Those who don’t overdose face an increased risk of addiction to drugs like heroin and fentanyl. Now, the county’s Opioid Task Force is proposing a $13.7 million fix to tackle the epidemic in Hillsborough, which it says will lower the number of victims and reduce the high cost of treating them. (O'Donnell, 10/17)

Internal emails from an opioid manufacturer under federal indictment for an alleged kickback scheme show that company executives held Overland Park doctor Steven Simon as one of their models for their sales force. The emails are included in a report released Tuesday by U.S. Senate committee staffers and provide new details about Simon’s relationship with Insys Therapeutics. (Marso, 10/16)