NEW YORK — Cocaine deaths have been rising in the U.S., health officials said Thursday in their latest report on the nation's deadliest drug overdose epidemic. After several years of decline, overdose deaths involving cocaine began rising around 2012. And they jumped by more than a third between 2016 and...
Deaths From Drugs and Suicide Set U.S. Record
By Adeel Hassan The number of deaths from alcohol, drugs, and suicide in 2017 hit the highest level since the collection of federal mortality data started in 1999, according to an analysis by two public health nonprofits, the Trust for America’s Health and the Well Being Trust. To reach their conclusion, the...
Drug Company Used Rap Video to Push for Higher Doses, Sales
BOSTON — Employees at a drug company accused of bribing doctors rapped and danced around a person dressed as a bottle of the highly addictive fentanyl spray in a video meant to motivate sales reps to push the drug. The video was shown to jurors this week in the closely...
Deadly Blue 'Mexican Oxy' Pills Take Toll on US Southwest
TUCSON, Ariz. — Aaron Francisco Chavez swallowed at least one of the sky blue pills at a Halloween party before falling asleep forever. He became yet another victim killed by a flood of illicit fentanyl smuggled from Mexico by the Sinaloa cartel into the Southwest — a profitable new business...
Indictment: Ex-‘American Idol’ Contestant Was Drug Courier
NORFOLK, Va. — A recently unsealed court document says a former contestant on both "American Idol" and "Fear Factor" worked as a courier for a drug ring and was trying to deliver nearly 2 pounds (830 grams) of fentanyl when she was arrested last year. The Virginian-Pilot reports 32-year-old Antonella Barba was...
Autopsy Finds Rapper Mac Miller Died From Drugs and Alcohol
LOS ANGELES — Mac Miller died from an accidental overdose due to a combination of alcohol and drugs, including fentanyl, a coroner's report released Monday said. The Los Angeles County coroner's report named the 26-year-old Miller's cause of death as "mixed toxicity," saying cocaine, alcohol and the powerful opioid fentanyl...