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Opioid crisis

City approves $500K opioid deal

WARREN — City council on Tuesday agreed to accept $500,000 as part of a multistate opioid lawsuit settlement that initially will provide about $4.5 million to Ohio. However, Warren’s share can increase to $709,096 if other conditions of the agreement are met over the course of the next 18 years. Other communities in the Mahoning Valley also are eligible to receive money from the court settlement, including Trumbull County, which could receive nearly $2.9 million; Youngstown, which could receive more than $811,000; and Mahoning County, which would receive $2.3 million, according ...

County on pace to break overdose death mark

WARREN — It appears Trumbull County is on track to surpass a record set in 2017 for the most fatal overdoses in the county in one year. In 2017, 56 deaths were recorded by June 28. Through June 28 this year, 57 fatal overdoses were logged, but 10 more from that time period still are pending and expected to be added to the total count, county Coroner Dr. Lawrence D’Amico said. If the 10 other cases are confirmed — and D’Amico said he believes there is a 90 to 100 percent chance they will be because urinalysis showed the cases are likely overdose deaths — the county will ...

Lawsuits accuse retail chains of flooding Ohio with painkillers

CLEVELAND (AP) — Five retail chains flooded two Ohio counties with tens of millions of prescription painkillers through their pharmacies while taking few if any steps to stop drugs from being illegally diverted, according to updated lawsuits unsealed in U.S. District Court in Cleveland. The counties are Trumbull and Lake. Their lawsuits made public Wednesday allege CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Walmart and Giant Eagle helped fuel a national drug crisis that resulted in more than 430,000 deaths since 2000. The counties' complaints are scheduled for trial in May 2021 before U.S. District ...

Overdose deaths rise once again in Trumbull County

WARREN — Drug overdose rates that went down in 2018 are back on the rise in 2019, and Trumbull County is on track to match record accidental overdose deaths in 2017, according to the executive director of the Trumbull County Mental Health and Recovery Board. “The tox screens show that fentanyl is in everything, and overdose death rates across the state are on the rise from cocaine and methamphetamine that contains fentanyl,” said April Caraway, executive director. “We are still in the midst of the opiate crisis, and now we are in an amphetamine crisis, too.” Accidental ...

ACA shapes grant spending on opioid epidemic

With Republicans and Democrats joining forces again in a bipartisan effort to target the U.S. opioid crisis, an Associated Press analysis of the first wave of emergency money from Congress finds that states are taking very different approaches to spending it. To a large extent, the ...

Ohio moved fast to use federal grant money for opioid epidemic

COLUMBUS — Ohio didn’t hesitate to spend the first round of federal funding targeting the country’s opioid crisis, unlike other states that also expanded Medicaid under the national health care law, records show. State officials spent $19 million, or about 73 percent, of the money it received last year as part of the two-year, nearly $1 billion 21st Century Cures Act grant program, according to an analysis of state’s spending by The Associated Press. That’s in contrast to other states that used the money to expand Medicaid, which reported spending less of their allocations ...