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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

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

In another opioid-related settlement for Johnson & Johnson, the company has agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars to settle litigation in New Hampshire...The state sued the company back in 2018, alleging that J&J's subsidiaries “aggressively marketed” opioid painkillers and falsely hawked them as safer than alternatives. Now, just before a trial was set to begin next week, J&J agreed to pay the state $40.5 million...READ MORE

A lawyer for two Ohio counties said...that CVS Health Corp, Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc and Walmart Inc should fund an $878 million plan to address the opioid crisis there, as a first-of-its-kind trial got underway to determine the pharmacy chains' contribution...the counties want the companies to fund a $878 million five-year plan that Mark Lanier, a lawyer representing the counties, said on Monday was aimed at solving the opioid crisis rather than allocating blame...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

...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

Despite fentanyl being among the leading causes of overdose deaths, few patients are screened for the substance in emergency rooms, a new study finds...The group looked to see how often toxicology screenings, which can inform treatment and public health data, were performed and what substances are tested for. Routine toxicology screens typically test for cocaine, amphetamines, marijuana, phencyclidine and natural opiates like heroin or morphine. Synthetic opioids like fentanyl require a separate test...Three-quarters of all drug overdose deaths in 2020 involved opioids, and the vast majority of those were synthetic...despite a slight rise in fentanyl testing over the years, only 5% of visits are currently tested—the highest testing rate since 2017. Of those screened, more than 40% are positive...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

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

The U.S. Supreme Court...rejected bids by Insys Therapeutics Inc founder John Kapoor and another former executive of the drugmaker to overturn their convictions for conspiring to bribe doctors to prescribe addictive opioids and defraud insurers into paying for them...Kapoor, 78, is serving a prison sentence of 5-1/2 years and is the highest-level corporate executive convicted at trial of crimes related to the opioid epidemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans in the past two decades...READ MORE