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Southern Nevada's first dispensary now open after months of red tape, medical marijuana cultivators are facing growing pains as they grapple with the state's strict testing standards…growers…failed…led to pounds of marijuana being destroyed,..Dispensaries report several batches of cannabis failing to meet the required levels for pesticides, mycotoxins or heavy metals,… Nevada's toughest-in-the-nation standards for marijuana quality are working.

DEA officials today announced a nationwide series of enforcement actions targeting every level of the global underground trade of anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs,…manufactured and trafficked from underground labs in China…Operation Cyber Juice …resulted in the arrest of over 90 individuals, the seizure of 16 underground steroid labs, approximately 134,000 steroid dosage units, 636 kilograms of raw steroid powder, 8,200 liters of raw steroid injectable liquid, and over $2 million in U.S. currency and assets.

US FDA has found no systemic issues affecting the safety or efficacy of generics clinically tested at GVK BioSciences, but says it supports Europe’s ban of around 700 products…Last week, a European ban took effect on…medicines that were approved based …on what regulators called flawed clinical studies… US Food and Drug Administration isn’t taking any action on products sold here that included data from GVK’s studies in their applications,…

New US drug shortages this year are running roughly at the same levels as the last two years, and far below the record highs seen earlier this decade,…several significant products remain difficult to find, and hospitals, still shaken by the critical shortages of the recent past, remain concerned that key drugs could once again become scarce..

(Mario DeSanctis) director of the Tomah Veterans Affairs Medical Center has been fired, becoming the second top official ousted amid reports of over-medication practices at the facility…. reports of excessive opioid prescriptions being written there… patients at Tomah facility were more likely than patients at other VA hospitals to receive high doses of pain killers.

U.S. appeals court has cleared the way for Novartis AG to launch the first biosimilar drug in the United States as it declined on Wednesday to stop the sale of the company's copycat version of Amgen Inc's blockbuster cancer drug Neupogen (filgrastim)…. Novartis (Sandoz) could begin to market its biosimilar drug, to be sold under the name Zarxio…. a version of Neupogen, have been available in Europe since 2006...

Kardashian's #CorrectiveAd came during MTV's Video Music Awards...Kim Kardashian West took to social media…to belatedly acknowledge the side effects of a controversial morning-sickness drug she endorses (Diclegis)… Aug. 7 warning from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to drugmaker Duchesnay saying that Kardashian's original paid endorsement omitted important safety information.

Hospitals across the country are under growing pressure to reduce preventable medical mistakes, the errors that can cause real harm and even death to patients…Department of Veterans Affairs, which runs a massive system of hospitals and clinics that cared for 5.8 million veterans last year, is doing less, not more, to identify what went wrong to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Data-driven fight begins with goal to cut overuse of antibiotics…Fifty hospital and health system members of Premier…are testing, defining and scaling new strategies in a nationwide effort to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria…goal is to reduce antibiotic overuse by 20 percent and implement the Centers for Disease Control's core elements of its antibiotic stewardship program by July 2016.

Attorney General Maura Healey announced Monday that a manufacturer of a drug that can help reverse opioid overdoses will pay the state $325,000, resolving her concerns about a sharp price increase…. settlement with Amphastar Pharmaceuticals Inc. will help make the drug, naloxone (nasal administration),..more widely available for less money to cities and towns across the state…The $325,000 will go into the Municipal Naloxone Bulk Purchase Trust Fund, created in this year’s state budget. That fund is aimed at helping communities gain cheaper access to the drug.