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The Justice Department took a significant step toward rescheduling marijuana Thursday, formalizing its process to reclassify the drug as lower-risk and remove it from a category in which it has been treated as more dangerous than fentanyl and meth...President Joe Biden announced the “major” move in a direct-to-camera video posted to his official account on X. “This is monumental,” Biden said in the message. “It’s an important move towards reversing long-standing inequities. … Far too many lives have been upended because of a failed approach to marijuana, and I’m committed to righting those wrongs. You have my word on it.”...The Biden administration has been signaling that it would move to reschedule the drug from Schedule I — a strict classification including drugs like heroin — to the less-stringent Schedule III, which would for the first time acknowledge the drug’s medical benefits at the federal level. The Drug Enforcement Administration submitted a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register on Thursday afternoon, triggering a 60-day comment period that will allow members of the public to submit remarks regarding the rescheduling proposal before it is finalized...READ MORE

After receiving more than $320 million so far from settlements with opioid companies, the state has created a process to divide it across all Nevada counties...the attorney general’s office debriefed members of the Assembly Committee on Revenue on the One Nevada Agreement on Allocation of Opioid Recoveries...“We included all counties — whether or not they were litigating or non-litigating — so that they all are receiving something because frankly, this opioid epidemic does not care about county lines or city lines,” said Chief Deputy Attorney General Mark Krueger...One of the more recent settlements was $32 million the state received through opioid litigation with Walmart...READ MORE

CVS reported a quarterly loss of more than $3 billion to cover its share of a global opioid settlement, but its third-quarter earnings blew past Wall Street estimates...The pharmacy retail giant said that it had a $5.2 billion charge in the third quarter for a settlement relating to its role in the opioid crisis. The settlement resolves "substantially all opioid lawsuits and claims filed by other states, political subdivisions and tribes against the company to be paid over 10 years, beginning in 2023...READ MORE

Nevada state police arrested a Washington state man and seized 56 pounds of suspected fentanyl with an estimated street value of $3.6 million from a vehicle a trooper stopped near the Utah line...Jorge A. Rivas-Vizcarra, 50, of Royal City was being held on multiple drug charges...in the White Pine County Jail in Ely where his bail was set at $750,000...He was arrested Monday after a traffic stop on U.S Highway 93 about 20 miles north of Ely...READ MORE

When Teva proposed its sweeping $4.25 billion opioid settlement to resolve thousands of claims across the country, all U.S. states except for Nevada and New Mexico jumped on board. Now, the company has worked out a separate $193 million deal with one of the holdouts...Under the deal, the generics giant will make annual payments to Nevada on a sliding scale starting next July and lasting through July 2043. The payouts will start at $7 million and rise to $9 million through 2037, then increase to $27 million in 2042...The cash will be divvied between Nevada and members of the One Nevada Agreement on Allocation of Opioid Recoveries, a group formed to distribute opioid-related funds to local governments...READ MORE

The former Sparks fire chief accused of illegal possession and distribution of steroids says he never gave his resignation and wants to be reinstated...Mark Lawson’s lawyers said in a letter sent to Sparks officials this week he should be returned to his role and placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of his criminal case...They said Lawson maintains his innocence and threatened to file a civil lawsuit alleging he was “condemned, terminated and tried in the public” before criminal charges had been filed. But he is confident the criminal complaint will be dismissed...READ MORE

...recent busts, largely made possible by advances in tapping criminals’ encrypted phones, underscore a reality that European drug authorities have been warning about: More cocaine than ever is pouring into the continent, where South American chemists, traffickers and local mafias are helping to bring it to market...With increasingly clever ways of smuggling the drug and its coca base — including infusing cocaine into plastic chips, charcoal or clothes — authorities and analysts believe they may be finding only 10% to 15%, or even as little as 1%, of what’s coming into Europe, a booming market for cocaine that now rivals the one in the United States...READ MORE

...the FDA approved the first over-the-counter naloxone product...the U.S.’ drug regulator blessed Emergent’s 4mg Narcan nasal spray with a nonprescription nod, teeing up direct-to-consumer sales at places like drug stores, convenience stores, supermarkets and gas stations...the timeline on which the product will be made available at stores—as well as its price—is up to Emergent...Other formulations and dosages of naloxone will remain prescription only, though there are access laws that technically permit pharmacies across all 50 states to dispense the emergency drug without a doctor’s note...READ MORE

To encourage sponsor application for over-the counter naloxone, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today issued a Federal Register notice, “Safety and Effectiveness of Certain Naloxone Hydrochloride Drug Products for Nonprescription Use,” that could help facilitate the development and potential approval of nonprescription naloxone drugs...“Today’s action supports our efforts to combat the opioid overdose crisis by helping expand access to naloxone,” said FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf, MD. “The agency will keep overdose prevention and reduction in substance use disorders as a key priority and area of intense strategic focus for action as rapidly as possible.”...READ MORE

Rep. Lauren Underwood, D-Illinois, and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, wrote a letter to CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure...calling out CMS to use new funding and existing authority to expand Medicare coverage. The letter comes amid rising rates of addiction deaths exacerbated in part by the pandemic...While Medicare does cover low-intensive levels of substance use disorder like therapy and high levels of care such as inpatient treatment, experts and advocates worry that CMS does not cover the full continuum of care for beneficiaries...READ MORE