The American opioid epidemic continues to ravage the nation, making no exceptions. According to annual reports conducted by the CDC, Heroin-related deaths have surged, killing over 50,000 people in 2015 alone. No one is immune to the disastrous effects of the drug, not even addiction counselors themselves.

As the nation’s opioid crisis worsens, authorities are confronting a resurgent, unruly player in the illicit trade of the deadly drugs, one that threatens to be even more formidable than the cartels: The Internet. In a growing number of arrests and overdoses, law enforcement officials say, the drugs are being bought online.

For Haitians, untrained vendors are the main source of medicine. For the sellers, it's a way to survive.

The US has a highly developed pharmaceutical industry offering treatments for all kinds of mental disorders. Millions of Americans are being medicated for ailments as diverse as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder and many others. Even young children are being put on psychiatric drugs. If parents decline such treatment, social services may intervene.

The state's attorney general filed the lawsuit Wednesday, alleging fraudulent marketing. "They knew they were wrong," Mike DeWine says, "but they did it anyway — and they continue to do it."

Scientists have worried about antibiotic resistance for decades.

Here's the latest on how we're winning the Drug War, stripped of the DEA's deceit and spin by the Office of the Inspector General. The report [PDF] takes a look at three incidents the DEA was involved with in Honduras during 2012. The...

People taking mushrooms in 2016 needed medical treatment less than for MDMA, LSD and cocaine, while one of the riskiest drugs was synthetic cannabis

Meanwhile, a new report suggests Mylan overcharged taxpayers by $1.27 billion. The investors were particularly critical of Chairman Robert Coury, who received more than $160 million in compensation in 2016

Doctors are making it tougher to get prescription opioids, but cartels are still making big profits. By Jeanna Smialek.

Police in Vancouver shared an alarming photograph showing what appears to be a pigeon’s egg nest constructed out of hypodermic needles. By Jessa Schroeder.

Stars in question have included Elvis, Truman Capote, Michael Jackson, and Marilyn Monroe.

Amid calls for faster reviews, researchers look for ways to catch dangerous drugs.

A rare group of people whose genetics make them virtually impervious to heart disease is guiding researchers to new drugs that may help the rest of us.

Type 2 diabetes, although influenced by a person’s genes, is largely thought to be brought about by a poor diet and being overweight for prolonged periods of time, particularly at an old age. The pancreas is either unable to produce enough insulin, or the body’s cells simply don’t react to insulin, which leads to dangerously high blood sugar levels. This is known as insulin resistance, and at present, there is no medical way to treat this. A new drug forged by a team at the University of California, however, might prove to be a veritable game-changer.

And not the kind you’re thinking of. By Christina Stiehl.

As many as 300,000 victims of Mexico's drug war could be hidden in fosas clandestinas.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized nearly $1 million in smuggled drugs at the U.S-Mexico border crossing in Nogales last week, officials said Monday. Border agents arrested five U.S. citizens and two Mexican nationals in separate attempts to smuggle drugs into the United States from Mexico. They involved 412 pounds of methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine that was worth more than $919,000, the agency said in a media release. The seizures occurred over three days last week. CBP provided these details:

Flakka was believed to be behind two cannibalistic attacks in Florida that left one man blind and a married couple dead. It wasn't so. Here‘s why we need facts, not myths, about dangerous drugs. By Joseph Palamar. (Nov. 28, 2016)

Scientific evidence of a ‘higher’ state of consciousness has been found in a study led by the University of Sussex.

The earliest pill emerged in ancient Egypt as a little round ball containing medicinal ingredients. For the next 5000 years color was almost non-existent. Does color really matter? Aside from the obvious fact that pills are more attractive to the eye, color has indeed benefited consumers as well as the pharmaceutical companies in several very functional ways.

The drug war in Mexico was ranked 2016's second deadliest conflict in the world, with only the war in Syria being labelled worse, a new annual survey has revealed. This means Mexico experienced levels of violence far more extreme than that of Iraq, Yemen or Afghanistan. As the war against Isis in Iraq, the civil war in Syria, and the conflict between the forces of Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and the Houthi rebels made the headlines, violence in Mexico has gone relatively underreported.

A Spirit Airlines pilot and his wife were found dead in their southwestern Ohio home Thursday. Authorities are still investigating but have said the deaths appear to be drug-related. Brian J. Halye, 36, a pilot with Spirit Airlines and his wife, 34-year-old Courtney A. Halye, were found dead in a bedroom of their home by their children, officials said.

A small but significant new study is blowing experts away after it found that a particular cancer drug overwhelmingly helped shrink or eradicate tumors in patients whose cancer had resisted every other form of treatment.

Patient advocates are urging FDA and drug companies to set the bar higher.

Drug trial studies that are sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry are more likely to favour a sponsor's product.

A new way of developing painkillers has been discovered by researchers from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. A team of scientists used computational simulation to analyze interactions at the cell’s docking sites for painkillers. These sites are called the opioid receptors. When their prototype of a morphine-like molecule was used in an animal model, it was able to produce substantial pain relief in inflamed tissues while healthy tissues remained unaffected. This suggests that the severe side effects currently associated with these types of painkillers could be avoided.

What would you do if your child was a heroin addict suffering from acute withdrawal symptoms?

Inside the recording studio at Screwed Up Records & Tapes, William Gibbs lights up a Black & Mild and pauses to consider how long he’s been sipping. Next to Gibbs—who’s better known as Will-Lean, a member of the legendary Houston hip-hop collective Screwed Up Click—is a tall, white Styrofoam cup. The concoction inside mixes Faygo Redpop, a strawberry-flavored cream soda, and promethazine codeine cough syrup, a prescription pain...

Carfentanil's a highly potent opioid. It is blamed for hundreds of lethal overdoses. Much of it reaches the U.S. from China, via the U.S. Postal Service. Now, China's announced a ban on the substance.

DCU's SeshSafe project is now providing students with drug-testing kits and information on drug safety, to check illegal drugs in an experiment seeking to reduce risks from adulterated substances. SeshSafe is the brainchild of DCU student and chairperson of the university's Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) group, Eleanor Hulm. After the deaths of three people in Cork and Dublin last year after drug use at parties, Ms Hulm took the initiative to provide a safe drug-testing kit to students in various Irish universities.

Picking up a quest abandoned by Big Pharma, academic labs are using new disruptive technology to develop contraceptive drugs for men.

The black flags of Isis have become the latest symbols of Islamic extremism. Their savagery has come to represent what we believe to be a vulgar distortion of an Abrahamic faith. We’ve grown exhausted in our infuriation at the commitment of these people to sadistic interpretations of scripture, supposedly leading them through beheadings and slaughter, all the way to paradise.

In addition to relieving headaches and preventing heart attacks, the drug seems to keep malignant cells from spreading.