Opioid Epidemic

What Idaho’s evolving opioid epidemic looks like today and what efforts are being made to combat it.

The Idaho Behavioral Health Council is asking for public input on how to spend money in the state’s opioid settlement fund to combat the epidemic.

Harm Reduction advocates are speaking out against a bill redefining who can receive free opioid reversal kits from the state.

Federal lawmakers on Tuesday heard from tribal and border patrol representatives in a hearing on how the opioid crisis is impacting Indigenous communities. Some witnesses advocated for the federal government to fully fund various Indigenous health services and one called for border policies that would stop the flow of drugs into these communities.

As Idaho’s population grows, so does the amount of drugs coming through the state. That includes an increasing amount of the dangerous drug fentanyl. Madelyn Beck reports on how this is straining the state’s crime labs.

Deadly overdoses from the synthetic opioid fentanyl are a growing problem. The drug is useful for doctors, but now it’s showing up all over. There are ways to test for it, but in some cases, that’s illegal, too. The Mountain West News Bureau’s Madelyn Beck explains.

Local entities have until early January to join the settlements with opioid manufacturer Johnson & Johnson and three major opioid distributors.

Fatal drug overdoses are skyrocketing, driven by synthetic opioids like fentanyl. And that potentially deadly drug has made it to the Mountain West – the last part of the U.S. to face the brunt of the opioid crisis.

In the high-stakes fight against fentanyl-induced drug deaths, one remedy is fairly simple: blue and white strips of paper. Fentanyl test strips work like a pregnancy test. One line shows up if there’s fentanyl in a solution. Two lines if there’s none. But where are they needed most?

Fentanyl test strips and better data may be a few of the many solutions to the opioid epidemic and the Mountain West's spike in overdose deaths.