Over the past two years, at least 16 people at the Mendocino County jail have overdosed while in custody.
A former drug dealer now offers harm reduction services and a pathway to recovery, if his clients choose.
A new study reveals just how often teens and young adults receive opioid prescriptions in emergency rooms, even as the crisis of addiction has exploded.
Harm reduction seeks not to shame people who use drugs into giving them up, but simply to provide them with the tools and support to improve their health.
In states such as New Mexico, many kids are put into treatment foster care who should never be there. The programs, run by private companies, vary widely in quality and safety from state to state.
Momentum is building to get emergency departments to play a bigger role in stemming the epidemic.
"We are overreacting to the need to lower opioid prescribing by punishing patients," says Dr. Kelly Pfeifer.
In Los Angeles County, the rate of deadly overdoses is much lower than the national rate. Why?
"Fixing our foster care crisis” was made possible through major funding from the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona and additional support from the University of Southern California Annenberg Center's Fund for Journalism on Child Well-being.
The opioid epidemic has given rise to an illicit gold rush as patient brokers and treatment centers profit off desperate addicts, funneling them to shoddy treatment centers and fraudulent “sober” homes at a profit of thousands per head.
