Cook County Jail provides medications for opioid use disorder to incarcerated people. Where frustration comes from advocates — and local officials — is the limitations of the Illinois Department of Corrections’ medication programming in prisons.
overdose
Amid five straight years of record overdose deaths in Illinois, a new state program aims to alleviate a shortage of professionals who work to prevent substance use disorders.
Ninety percent of the opioid overdose deaths involved fentanyl, according to Cook County’s Medical Examiner’s Office.
A new state health report pinpoints racism as a public health crisis while also noting Illinois needs to improve in the areas of maternal and infant health, mental health and substance use disorders.
Illicitly manufactured fentanyl was involved in nearly all overdose deaths with evidence of counterfeit pills use, including more than two out of five deaths that were exclusively caused by it, CDC researchers found.
There were 103 overdose deaths attributable to fentanyl in Cook County in 2015. That number shot up to a record 1,825 in 2022, according to statistics from the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office. That accounts for more than 90% of all opioid-related deaths in the county.
The synthetic opioid fentanyl remains a danger in Chicago, especially in Black and Latino communities, where the odds of a fentanyl-involved overdose have significantly increased in recent years.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved selling the leading version of naloxone without a prescription, setting the overdose-reversing drug on course to become the first opioid treatment drug to be sold over the counter.
The key culprit appears to be the widespread availability of the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl.
Why is Puerto Rico sending addicts from the island to Chicago? WBEZ reporter Odette Yousef explains the story.
U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk expands efforts to fight heroin overdoses in Cook and surrounding counties.
