Opioid Overdoses

Franklin County and Columbus Public Health officials plan to distribute bags that deactivate prescription drugs as part of the fight against the opioid epidemic. 

Kentucky's attorney general has filed a lawsuit against Dublin-based Cardinal Health, which has been linked to an opioid pipeline. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says Ohio’s drug overdose death rate rose 39 percent between mid-2016 and mid-2017 — the third-largest increase of any state.

The opioid epidemic has cost the U.S. more than a trillion dollars since 2001, according to a new study, and may exceed another $500 billion over the next three years.

More than three months after President Trump declared the nation's opioid crisis a public health emergency, activists and health care providers say they're still waiting for some other action.

The Trump administration quietly renewed the declaration recently. But it has given no signs it's developing a comprehensive strategy to address an epidemic that claims more than 115 lives every day. The president now says that to combat opioids, he's focused on enforcement, not treatment.

The Ohio Attorney General's office says investigations of human trafficking cases rose last year to the highest level since the state began keeping track of those numbers in 2013. 

The number of transplants using organs from people who fatally overdosed on drugs is rising in central Ohio and the nation. 

Columbus Public Health has issued a community advisory about an increase in cocaine and fentanyl-related overdose deaths. 

Accidental deaths in the United States rose significantly in 2016, becoming the third-leading cause of fatalities for the first time in more than a century – a trend fueled by the steep rise in opioid overdoses, the National Safety Council reports.

Accidents — defined by the council as unintentional, preventable injuries — claimed a record 161,374 lives in 2016, a 10 percent increase over 2015. They include motor vehicle crashes, falls, drowning, choking and poisoning, a category that encompasses accidental overdoses.

Former Republican State Representative and current senate candidate Gene Krebs is calling for the creation of a state fund to help counties boost employment, fight opioid abuse and cover basic expenses.

The Franklin County Coroner's office says 383 people died of drug overdoses during the first nine months of the year. 

Life expectancy in the U.S. fell for the second year in a row in 2016, nudged down again by a surge in fatal opioid overdoses, federal officials report Thursday.

"I'm not prone to dramatic statements," says Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the National Center for Health Statistics. "But I think we should be really alarmed. The drug overdose problem is a public health problem, and it needs to be addressed. We need to get a handle on it."

The man who sold a fatal dose of fentanyl to a Bexley man in 2015 has been sentenced to ten years in prison.

The Franklin County coroner's office is asking county commissioners to approve an additional 500 thousand dollars in it's budge next year.

An estimated 75 members of the Teamsters union and their supporters held a candlelight vigil early Wednesday outside of the headquarters of Dublin-based Cardinal Health, hoping to call attention to the drug firm's role in the opioid crisis.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is sending law enforcement teams to Cleveland, Cincinnati and cities in four other states to help stop the flow of heroin and synthetic opioids.

The City of Toledo is joining several other Ohio cities and counties in suing prescription drugmakers and distributors.