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The U.S. Treasury...imposed sanctions on three Chinese men accused of illegally trafficking fentanyl, acting three weeks after President Donald Trump accused Beijing of reneging on pledges to stem a flood of the highly addictive synthetic opioid into the United States...The trio included a father and son indicted in Ohio...on charges of producing and smuggling fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances. The third man was indicted on similar charges in Mississippi...The United States had pressed China to arrest Fujing Zheng and his father, Guanghua Zheng, and Xiaobing Yan since their indictments...The three men were designated as foreign drug kingpins by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control under a law that freezes any property they control in the United States and bars American citizens from doing business with those properties...The three also face penalties ranging from civil fines of up to $1.1 million per violation to more serious criminal penalties...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

Diverting border security resources to address the “humanitarian need” of migrants is leading to record-high levels of illicit drug smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border, said James W. Carroll, director of the U.S. Office of Drug Control Policy...Carroll said, “I couldn’t tell you how bad this is. Seizures are down, and it’s not because there are less drugs coming in. It’s because their attention has to be diverted because of the humanitarian need, but what that means is more drugs are coming in than ever before.”...READ MORE

CVS Pharmacy has completed the rollout of time delay safes in all of its 318 CVS Pharmacy locations in Michigan, including pharmacies located in Target stores...The safes are anticipated to help prevent pharmacy robberies and the diversion of controlled substance narcotic medications by keeping them out of the hands of unauthorized individuals, as well as help the company ensure the safety and well-being of its customers and employees...The company expects these time delay safes to help deter pharmacy robberies including those involving opioid medications such as oxycodone and hydrocodone by electronically delaying the time it takes for pharmacy employees to be able to open the safe. CVS Pharmacy first implemented time delay safes in Indianapolis, a city experiencing at the time a high volume of pharmacy robberies, in 2015. The company saw a 70% decline in pharmacy robberies among the Indianapolis stores where the time delay safes had been installed...READ MORE

Endo International Plc and Allergan Plc have agreed to pay $15 million to avoid going to trial...in a landmark case by two Ohio counties accusing various drug manufacturers and distributors of fueling the U.S. opioid epidemic...The tentative deals...came ahead of the first trial to result from 2,000 lawsuits pending in federal court in Cleveland largely by local governments seeking to hold drug companies responsible for the deadly epidemic...The accords are the first to result from the counties’ cases, which were selected for the first bellwether, or test, trial in the litigation to allow parties to gauge the value of the remaining claims and inform potential settlement talks...READ MORE

McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health Inc., and AmerisourceBergen Corp. have proposed paying $10 billion to settle claims they helped to fuel the U.S. opioid epidemic — the first sign of progress in resolving state lawsuits against the drug distributors…The companies, which deliver the majority of prescription medications to U.S. pharmacies, made the verbal proposal as part of talks with a group of state attorneys general...Whether the distributors and attorneys general can agree to a deal remains uncertain...READ MORE

Scotland had the highest drug-related death rate in the European Union in 2018, with the likes of heroin, methadone and cocaine killing at almost three times the rate of the United Kingdom as a whole...A report published by National Records of Scotland...said a record 1,187 people died from drugs in 2018, up 27% on the year before, giving a rate of 213 per million...Heroin and/or morphine potentially contributed to 45% of the deaths in 2018 – the number for methadone was 47% and for cocaine was 23%. Most of the deaths occurred after people had taken a mixture of different drugs...READ MORE

About five years ago, Nevada started taking high-profile steps toward tackling the opioid crisis. There were bills to curb doctor-shopping and over-prescribing in 2015 and 2017, a statewide opioid summit in 2016 and a cascade of lawsuits against opioid manufacturers from the state and local governments in the past few years...But has the growing awareness and response made a dent in the epidemic?...Scores of law enforcement, treatment professionals, elected officials and others gathered in Las Vegas this week for a two-day conference where they assessed progress and exchanged ideas on how to better tackle opioid abuse...Here are some takeaways from the event:...READ MORE

The past business practices of biopharma companies like Endo and Teva continue to be under scrutiny. The scope of pending legal actions is difficult to quantify, given that both governments and individuals are involved, and the actions have now extended to price fixing as well as marketing...Using Iqvia prescription data, Purdue Pharma's $270 million settlement with Oklahoma and Teva's subsequent $85 million deal as benchmarks, Fadia calculated the total liability to be $4 billion for Endo, $2.5 billion for Teva, $1.2 billion for Amneal and $800 million for Mylan. That estimate relates to improper marketing of opioids...On the price-fixing charges, Fadia built an estimate around Iqvia prescriptions and potential excess sales that could have occurred on 114 different drugs, and then applied treble damages. In this scenario, Teva's liability could be as much as $3.1 billion, Mylan's $2.8 billion, Endo's $265 million and Amneal's $55 million…READ MORE

Seizures of tramadol globally have surged from less than 10 kg in 2010 to almost 9 tonnes in 2013 and 125 tonnes in 2017, the report showed, adding that the problem was particularly severe in West, Central and North Africa...Several West African countries have reported that tramadol is one of the most widely used drugs for non-medical purposes after cannabis, which remains by far the most popular globally… Some consume tramadol for its calming, analgesic and anti-fatigue effects in order to improve intellectual, physical and working performances, and to lessen the need for sleep and decrease appetite...In farming communities, there are reports of tramadol being used by humans and fed to cattle to enable them to work under extreme conditions. Others use tramadol as a recreational drug on account of its stimulant and euphoric effects, or to improve sexual stamina...READ MORE