Opioids

Many overdose patients end up in hospital emergency rooms, but before this week in D.C., they couldn’t get treatment for their addiction. Instead, hospitals would refer patients to treatment programs outside of the hospital.

Three D.C. hospitals have launched programs providing medication-assisted addiction treatment to recent overdose victims in emergency rooms, a key component in the District’s plan to reduce overdose deaths by half by the end of next year. …

D.C. officials have purchased 66,000 naloxone kits, part of a plan to dramatically increase the supply of a lifesaving opioid-overdose antidote that has been scarce on the streets of a city with one of the nation’s highest rates of drug…

More than two months after D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) released a far-reaching plan to cut opioid overdose deaths in half by late 2020, key programs described in the plan have not been launched, according to city officials and service…

The National Institute on Drug Abuse reported in January that more than 130 people in the United States die every day due to an opioid overdose. Washington, D.C., ranks third in the country with the highest rates of overdose deaths,…

For two months in 2015, the city tried to get everyone who overdosed into treatment, with promising results. Then it stopped.

Amid angry testimony, the District reports a 30 percent reduction in opioid deaths in the last year. But leaders don’t trust that data point.

D.C. lawmakers, public health experts, doctors and addiction treatment providers forcefully criticized the city’s efforts to address an explosion in fatal opioid overdoses, saying at a D.C. Council hearing Monday that city officials failed…

D.C. lawmakers want to know why the District continues to see a rise of opioid-related overdose deaths, despite millions of dollars being poured in to combat the issue.

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) announced Friday that she plans to equip the District’s police officers with a life-saving overdose antidote, reversing her administration’s previous opposition to an initiative supporters say will help…

Mayor Bowser announced on Friday that she will move to equip D.C. police officers with naloxone, a lifesaving opioid overdose antidote.

Federal officials have launched an audit of the D.C. government’s handling of millions of dollars in grants that the city has been awarded over the past two years to treat opioid addiction and reduce fatal overdoses.

D.C. lawmakers will hold a public hearing to examine failures in the city’s response to surging heroin deaths in African American neighborhoods and to assess future strategies for combating the opioid epidemic.

As government officials across the country struggle to slow the death toll of America’s opioid epidemic, thousands of police departments from coast to coast have equipped their officers with naloxone, a lifesaving overdose antidote.

THE RECENT announcement by D.C. officials of a plan of action to tackle the District’s opioid epidemic prompts two questions. What took them so long? And, what are the chances for success given the city’s sorry performance to date in…

The number of people who died from opioid-related overdoses in the District more than tripled over three years. Now, D.C. has released a plan aimed at dialing back those numbers.