The Latest News from Our Field

The Food and Drug Administration has stepped up warnings about the dangers of combining opioid painkillers with benzodiazepine sedatives. The agency is requiring new warnings on labels for opioids such as oxycodone, hydrocodone and morphine, as well as for benzodiazepines such as alprazolam and diazepam.

Prescription drug monitoring databases are assisting states in battling the opioid epidemic, according to The Wall Street Journal.

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has sent a letter to every doctor in the country, asking for their help in solving the opioid epidemic, CNN reports.

Children and teens who are diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and take medication for the condition are less likely to have a substance use disorder than youth with ADHD who don’t take medication, a new study finds.

A new study suggests restrictions put into place by the U.S. government on a chemical needed to produce cocaine have led to a reduced use of the drug in the past decade. Mexican police action against a company importing pseudoephedrine, which is used to make meth, also contributed to the decline.

An experimental drug that relieves pain like morphine but is not addictive showed promise in a study of mice, the Los Angeles Times reports.

If a tobacco company changes a label for a product, the Food and Drug Administration cannot consider it a new product for regulatory purposes, a federal judge ruled this week.

A new study suggests that having health coaches deliver a drug and alcohol screening program to Medicaid patients can save money, while significantly reducing inpatient hospital days. The program, known as Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT), can help many people with risky or problem drinking and drug use, says study co-author Richard L. Brown, MD, MPH, Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

U.S. college students are more likely to drink and less likely to smoke than their peers who aren’t enrolled in school, a new survey finds. College students are also more likely to binge drink than 18- to 22-year-olds who are not in college.

Smokers who have to walk farther to buy cigarettes are more likely to quit, a new study suggests. Researchers found that for every one-third of a mile smokers had to walk to the nearest tobacco outlet, there was a 20 to 60 percent increase in the odds they would stop smoking.

Appalachia, which has long been dealing with an epidemic of prescription opioid abuse, is now seeing an influx of heroin, The Courier-Journal reports.

Three U.S. senators have introduced a bill that would require doctors to use prescription drug monitoring programs before they prescribe painkillers. The Prescription Drug Monitoring Act is co-sponsored by Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Angus King of Maine.

A new study finds an increased risk of suicide attempts in teens is associated with prescription drug abuse, Reuters reports. Teens who said they used prescription drugs for non-medical purposes at the start of the study were almost three times as likely to report a suicide attempt a year later.

The incidence of babies born in the United States with neonatal abstinence syndrome quadrupled from 1999 to 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Many doctors feel ill-equipped to counsel their patients about the potential medical uses of marijuana, USA Today reports. Some states are establishing physician training programs to address marijuana’s health effects.

Large financial incentives may help increase long-term quit-smoking rates in low-income smokers, a new study suggests.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on Thursday announced that it will not reclassify marijuana as a drug with accepted medical uses. The DEA will increase the number of authorized marijuana manufacturers supplying researchers.

Racial bias and stereotyping contribute to inferior treatment for pain in minority patients, experts tell The New York Times. As a result, minority patients suffer more disability than white patients.

A growing number of states are loosening or lifting bans on government benefits for people with felony drug convictions, PBS NewsHour reports.

New guidelines on diagnosing fetal alcohol spectrum disorder have been released by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The new guidelines clarify and expand recommendations made in 2005.

Top headlines of the week from Friday, August 5- Thursday, August 11, 2016.

After a targeted campaign designed to reduce teen abuse of over-the-counter (OTC) cough medicine was introduced, reported abuse by teens decreased 35 percent, a new study finds. The Consumer Healthcare Products Association, which spearheaded the campaign, says while the study doesn’t prove the effort led to the decrease, it suggests it played a role.

Many Olympic athletes are taking advantage of a loophole that allows them to take a legal prescription drug that may improve their performance, but has not been banned by anti-doping authorities, NPR reports. Athletes in sports including tennis, swimming, cycling and volleyball are practicing this “legal doping.”

At least one person died and eight more were treated in a San Francisco emergency room late last year after taking counterfeit Xanax tablets cut with fentanyl, according to HealthDay.

Many e-cigarette products were rushed to market ahead of new Food and Drug Administration regulations on tobacco products, which took effect Monday. The new rules require companies to submit e-cigarettes for government approval, Reuters reports.