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A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds the rise of STDs nationwide broke a new record for the fifth consecutive year...Nevada continues to top the list for the highest rate of primary and secondary syphilis...READ MORE

The bootleg medications were smuggled across the border and sold to mostly Latino immigrants in public spaces throughout Los Angeles — at swap meets, parks, beauty salons and makeshift stands outside mom-and-pop grocery stores...The drugs were cheap, and the customers — mostly from Mexico and Central America — did not need prescriptions to buy them. Some of the products featured brand names and colorful packaging that immigrants knew well from their home countries…Many were sheer counterfeits. Others, though legal south of the border, were not approved for sale in the United States. Some had expired. Still others would have been legal if sold by people licensed to do so — but none of the sellers held pharmacist licenses or any other medical credential...READ MORE

Naloxone dispensing from retail pharmacies increased from 2012 to 2018, with substantial increases in recent years. Despite increases, in 2018, only one naloxone prescription was dispensed for every 69 high-dose opioid prescriptions. The lowest rates of naloxone dispensing were observed in the most rural counties...What are the implications for public health practice?...READ MORE

The Journal of the American Medical Association recently published Estimated Changes in Manufacturer and Health Care Organization Revenue Following List Price Reductions for Hepatitis C Treatments by Sean Dickson and Ian Reynolds. The paper purports to show that manufacturers’ net revenues increased following a decrease in three drugs’ list prices...However, the paper contains a significant computational error: The authors do not properly calculate the 340B ceiling price. Consequently, the authors’ calculations are inaccurate and their conclusions are erroneous. As we might expect, a manufacturer’s revenue per-patient doesn’t increase when list prices decline and net prices remain constant...READ MORE

The state is imposing $17.4 million in fines on 21 diabetes drug manufacturers that have either failed to comply with or were many months late in complying with a drug pricing transparency law passed two years ago...The fines, which the state is allowed to assess at $5,000 a day, range from $735,000 for one company that submitted the required drug pricing data the same day it received a final notice from the state — but 147 days after the reporting deadline — to $910,000 for eight companies that still have yet to report the required information. The Department of Health and Human Services told the companies in letters sent this week that they have 30 days to either pay the fines in full or 10 days to request an informal dispute resolution meeting with the state...READ MORE

Nevada regulators are investigating marijuana testing laboratories to figure out how cannabis with exceedingly high levels of yeast and mold made it to store shelves, as well as for possibly doctoring THC levels to make cannabis products appear more potent to consumers...the state sent out a notice that several batches of marijuana flower and pre-rolls showed levels of yeast and mold that exceeded the state’s allowable limit after a secondary test. A follow-up test conducted by the state’s Department of Agriculture found that some of the products had yeast and mold levels of 390,000 colony-forming units per gram, which is nearly 40 times higher than the state’s legal threshold of 10,000 cfu/g...READ MORE

The Nevada Independent filed a lawsuit...against the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services seeking access to a number of records related to the state’s 2017 diabetes drug pricing transparency law...The Independent filed two records requests this year seeking copies of annual reports submitted by diabetes drug companies and the drug pricing middlemen who help sell them to the state…The annual reports are required to explain how and why a drug price spikes over time...But the state has denied much of both requests on the grounds that such information is exempt from state public records law because of a federal trade secret law...READ MORE

As U.S. officials press a massive case for alleged generic drug price fixing, authorities in the U.K. have unearthed an example of rivals working a little too closely with each other...King Pharmaceuticals and Alissa Healthcare Research, which both sold the antidepressant drug nortriptyline, admitted to exchanging "commercially sensitive information" in order to keep prices high...The U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority said...it had found the companies exchanged info about prices, volumes and market entry plans for their drugs...READ MORE

The Nevada Department of Health and Human Services is threatening to levy roughly $20 million in fines on more than two dozen drug manufacturers that have yet to submit cost and profit reports to the state as required by a 2017 law aimed at better understanding the rising costs of treating diabetes...under Nevada law...companies can be assessed a fine of up to $5,000 a day for noncompliance. With 143 days since the manufacturer reports were due on April 1, each company that has yet to submit a report is facing a fine of up to $715,000...READ MORE

Across the United States and Canada, people are buying cocaine only to discover too late that it contains potentially deadly fentanyl…In all cases, victims "reported thinking they were snorting cocaine," said a team led by Dr. Patil Armenian, of the University of California, San Francisco, in Fresno. Instead, they had ingested cocaine laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid...Overall, "death rates involving cocaine increased by approximately one-third during 2016-2017," the researchers added...READ MORE