Despite Pharma Claims, Illicit Drug Shipments to US Aren’t Full of Opioids. It’s Generic Viagra.

For years, the FDA has defended its efforts to intercept prescription drugs coming from abroad by mail as necessary to keep out dangerous opioids, including fentanyl. The pharmaceutical industry frequently cites such concerns in its battle to stymie numerous proposals in Washington to allow Americans to buy drugs from Canada and other countries where prices … Read more

As Opioids Mixed With Animal Tranquilizers Arrive in Kensington, So Do Alarming Health Challenges

Many people living on the streets in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood — the largest open-air drug market on the East Coast — are in full-blown addiction, openly snorting, smoking, or injecting illicit drugs, hunched over crates or on stoops. Syringes litter sidewalks, and the stench of urine fouls the air. The neighborhood’s afflictions date to the … Read more

Some Addiction Treatment Centers Turn Big Profits by Scaling Back Care

Near the end of his scheduled three-month stay at a rehab center outside Austin, Texas, Daniel McKegney was forced to tell his father in North Carolina that he needed more time and more money, he recently recalled. His father had already received bills from BRC Recovery totaling about $150,000 to cover McKegney’s treatment for addiction … Read more

A $30 Million Gift to Build an Addiction Treatment Center. Then Staffers Had to Run It.

DECATUR, Ill. — The question came out of the blue, or so it seemed to Crossing Healthcare CEO Tanya Andricks: If you had $30 million to design an addiction treatment facility, how would you do it? The interim sheriff of Macon County, Illinois, posed the question in 2018 as he and Andricks discussed the community’s … Read more