DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION

Adults using prescription stimulants for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder sharply increased from 2020 to 2021, a government study found, the latest to highlight changes wrought by the pandemic.

DETROIT - Federal drug agents seized 20 kilos of fentanyl this week that was being transported from Grand Rapids to metro Detroit. The Drug Enforcement Administration said that amount of the painkiller fentanyl was enough to provide a deadly dose to nearly all 10 million people in Michigan. Later that evening, Michigan State Police and the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office seized 20 kilos of fentanyl and a firearm during a traffic stop in metro-Detroit. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid used for pain relief, is about 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin, federal drug officials say. The DEA says cartels like CJNG and Sinaloa are behind the “vast majority” of fentanyl trafficked in the United States.

The drug has been found in an increasing number of overdoses and overdose deaths.

Xylazine, a sedative approved for animals, is increasingly being found mixed with fentanyl, authorities said.

Telehealth made access to ADHD drugs easier for many. But a shortage has put the spotlight on virtual prescribing and supply chain issues.

The Justice Department alleged Rite Aid's Government Affairs department told employees to delete internal information warning about suspicious prescribers.

A nationwide shortage of Adderall has left many patients struggling to manage their attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, better known as ADHD. But finger-pointing does little to help the many who depend on consistent access to ADHD medications. As one might imagine, these trends have vastly increased demand for the stimulant medications used to treat ADHD, including Adderall. There's no denying that skyrocketing demand for Adderall combined with manufacturing delays at Teva, one of the drug's biggest producers, are partly responsible for the current shortage. In order to set such quotas, the DEA must estimate how much Adderall American patients will require the following year.

The Drug Enforcement Agency and Arizona police have seized more than 4.5 million fentanyl pills in an investigation targeting the Sinaloa Drug Cartel.

The Drug Enforcement Administration is moving to require patients to see a doctor in person before receiving prescriptions for some controlled medications.

The Biden administration is moving to require patients see a doctor in person before getting drugs to treat attention deficit disorders or addictive painkillers, toughening access amid a deepening opioid crisis.

The Biden administration is moving to require patients see a doctor in person before getting drugs to treat attention deficit disorders or addictive painkillers, toughening access amid a deepening opioid crisis.

The Biden administration is proposing making permanent some Trump-era allowances established at the start of the pandemic that allow medical providers to prescribe drugs through telehealth visits.

Pharmacies in states with legal adult-use marijuana purchase less prescription codeine

Turmoil in one of the agency's most important offices was an embarrassing distraction as agents tried to work with Mexican counterparts to deter drug trafficking.

Greensburg Police Chief Shawn Denning was arrested and charged with aiding and abetting the distribution of cocaine and meth, conspiracy and other charges.

DEA officials revealed how they calculated the headline-making statistic.

Last year, in Michigan, Ohio and Northern Kentucky the DEA said they seized 280 thousand fentanyl-laced pills and 600 pounds of fentanyl powder.

The company is accused of failing to report hundreds of thousands of potentially suspicious orders.

The DEA shared a picture of the bust that showed two large ziplock bags filled with blue fentanyl pills that were hidden in a hollowed-out English dictionary.

DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said the seizures recorded by the agency this year contained enough fentanyl “to kill everyone in the United States.”

In a Denver suburb on the Sunday of Presidents' Day weekend, five people died simultaneously in what was then the nation’s largest known mass fentanyl poisoning.

Deaths from fentanyl among teens have more than tripled since 2019.

Plus: Mere discovery is overrated.

The Washington Post traced the fentanyl crisis from the back alleys of northern Mexico, to official Washington. U.S. border authorities are now overwhelmed.

Fentanyl presented the biggest challenge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s 50-year history. It faltered, according to former agents and DEA officials.

Law enforcement agencies across the country made record setting fentanyl busts in 2022 after the drug has become the primary driver of the opioid crisis in recent years.

A specially trained dog detected a suspicious package at a mail delivery company in Sinaloa — home to the drug cartel of the same name.

A program to get rid of old prescription drugs and educate the public of potential medication abuse is being held by the DEA in Kentucky.

Experts strongly doubt that drug dealers are trying to push the deadly opioid on trick-or-treaters.

As part of the event, there is a drop-off spot at the Kalamazoo Public Safety headquarters, 155 E. Crosstown Parkway, the department said. A Drug Enforcement Administration task force officer will be at headquarters from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., so any citizen can give up their unneeded prescription drugs. “Unused or expired prescription medications are a public safety issue,” KDPS said in a news release. The take back day accepts all medications, KDPS Public Information Officer Jay Shatara said. Last year, the department collected 123 pounds of medication at KDPS headquarters during the day.

Authorities found 300,000 fentanyl pills and more than 20 pounds of powdered fentanyl in a Bronx apartment.

David Maldonado managed to drive away from DEA agents after agreeing to cooperate with them following a 114-pound fentanyl bust.

A memo making rounds in the Senate this week details how the border and fentanyl crises are correlated as overdose deaths take a toll on Americans across the country.

More than 10.2 million fentanyl pills were seized during drug busts across the country in a nearly four-month span, the Justice Department said.

Federal officials say an increasing number of fake prescription pills containing potentially deadly fentanyl are helping drive overdose death rates to record levels in the U.S. And officials warn that some of the pills are being manufactured in rainbow colors designed to look like candy.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the nation, at least seven students have overdosed on possible fentanyl-laced pills in just the past month.

The Justice Department said two Massachusetts men have been charged with trafficking thousands of fentanyl pills in candy boxes and wrappers into Connecticut.

The Chinese government has little incentive to rejoin and effort to stop its drug cartels from shipping fentanyl to the U.S. and deepening the opioid crisis in America.

What is often called "rainbow fentanyl" has been seized by law enforcement agencies in 18 states just this month, the DEA reports.

The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration said two Mexican cartels are behind the deadly influx of fentanyl in the U.S.

Two Washington Post journalists say pharmaceutical companies collaborated with each other — and with lawyers and lobbyists — to create laws to protect the industry. Their new book is American Cartel.

Washington Post reporters Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz focus on the "Big Three" distributors that saturated the country with pain pills.

Rafael Caro Quintero is considered an architect of the 1985 kidnapping, torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena in Mexico, a seminal event in U.S.-Mexican relations.

It marks the biggest seizure of fentanyl pills in California history, authorities said.

An adaptation from Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz’s book, “American Cartel,” reveals how lobbyists, lawmakers and K Street attorneys thwarted efforts to stop the deadly flow of pain pills.

On two separate occasions, a dollar bill was found on the floor of a gas station containing methamphetamine and fentanyl, authorities say.

Tuesday, May 17, 2022 I “Katt Williams: World War III” begins streaming on Netflix.

Materials used to make fentanyl are shipped from China to Mexico before flowing into the U.S., the Drug Enforcement Administration said.

The Dearborn and Dearborn Heights Police Departments are participating in prescription take back events at the end of the month.

The amount of the synthetic opioid seized is equivalent to 42 kilograms.

The amount of the synthetic opioid seized is equivalent to 42 kilograms.

We’re learning how a murder shown in a “48 Hours” episode from 2015 could help police in the death of Amie Harwick, a therapist who at one time was engaged to Drew Carey, host of “The Price Is Right” on CBS. Vlad Duthiers spoke with “48 Hours” correspondent Erin Moriarty about this development.

The unidentified "trainee" told authorities she'd been given a DEA badge and photo ID, and said she'd been attending school for Criminal Justice.

A Colombian national police officer who was part of an elite unit that worked closely with U.S. anti-narcotics agents has been extradited to Miami to stand trial on charges he betrayed the Drug Enforcement Administration to the same traffickers they were jointly fighting.

A nonprofit organization has partnered with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to make parents aware of how easy it is for teens to store drugs in plain sight.

Authorities say a Drug Enforcement Administration special agent was killed when a passenger opened fire as officers were doing a routine inspection for illegal contraband on an Amtrak train in Tucson, Arizona.

A Drug Enforcement Administration agent arrested on charges stemming from the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol is accused of posing for photographs in which he flashed his DEA badge and firearm outside the building while off duty.

A retired high-ranking official with the Drug Enforcement Administration has testified that three large opioid distributors had a “systematic failure” in monitoring suspicious pill orders.

The Drug Enforcement Agency and Detroit Police Department are joining Saturday for something they hope will have an impact far greater than any drug bust.

Opioid drug overdose deaths are down in US, study finds, but COVID-19 could change that. DETROIT – McLaren Health Care Corp. has agreed to pay the federal government more than $7.7 million to resolve alleged violations of provisions of the Controlled Substances Act. McLaren said a pharmacist at its Port Huron retail pharmacy was “diverting opioids for his own personal use” and has since been fired. McLaren said it exited the retail pharmacy business in 2018, adding that the move was unrelated to the federal investigation. The health system has more than a dozen hospitals across Michigan.

DETROIT – Prescription medications can be dangerous and even deadly -- and they’re probably just sitting in your medicine cabinet. The Drug Enforcement Administration laid out reasons for all of us to participate in National Prescription Drug Take Back Day on Saturday, Oct. 24. According to the DEA, the majority of abused prescription drugs are obtained through family or friends, often from their own medicine cabinet. In the past, National Prescription Drug Take Back Day has been very successful. More information can be found on the official National Prescription Drug Take Back Day website here.

NEW YORK – Walmart is suing the U.S. government in a pre-emptive strike in the battle over its responsibility in the opioid abuse crisis. Walmart says it is seeking a declaration from a federal judge that the government has no lawful basis for seeking civil damages from the company. The lawsuit names the Justice Department and Attorney General William Barr as defendants. Brown went into private practice in the Dallas areaA spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Texas that handled the investigation referred questions to the Justice Department in Washington. The Justice Department declined to comment.

WASHINGTON – More than 1,500 people have been arrested on state and federal criminal charges in the last three months as part of a Drug Enforcement Administration project focusing on violent crime, the agency’s acting administrator told The Associated Press. Such operations are common for the federal government, but the issue of law-and-order is a major component of President Donald Trump's reelection campaign. The DEA -- under the umbrella of the Department of Justice -- is responsible for investigating major drug cases and international drug smuggling, along with drug gangs who are often responsible for upticks in violence within communities. “By going after the violent crime, we’ve been able to investigate the larger regional groups,” Shea said. “Plus, we’re addressing the violent crime problem in these localities.”

While at the Drug Enforcement Administrations Training Academy, Brown said he was once pepper-sprayed three times in a single training exercise while other trainees were sprayed once. When both responded, the white instructor clarified, “I meant the monkey.”That behavior, as alleged in an internal complaint, didn’t stop there. The instructor also was accused of going on the loudspeaker in the tower of the outdoor firing range to taunt black trainees by making “monkey noises.”“We were like, ‘It’s 2019. That shouldn’t even be a thing that we’re dealing with,’” said Derek Moise, who did not hear the noises himself but recalled the discomfort they caused his fellow Black trainees who did. The recruits who originally accused Mortenson are still employed by the DEA and not permitted to speak publicly about the incidents.

DETROIT Criminals were breaking into Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) registered pharmacies to steal narcotics and sell them on the street. Local 4 Defenders obtained surveillance video from the Crownz Pharmacy in Warren from the early morning hours in June. The Warren pharmacy break in was a part of a string of burglaries committed by a group of individuals working together. The Pharmor Pharmacy on Woodward in Detroit was also targeted, according to the complaint. Hamilton is scheduled to go to trial on Sept. 8 in federal court in Detroit.

DETROIT The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said meth disguised as candy, or child vitamins, is creeping its way into the Midwestern region. This is the first time that weve really seen this, said DEA Special Agent in Charge of Detroit Field Division, Keith Martin. In the last couple months, weve seen these meth pills that look like candy, or some people say they look like Flintstone vitamins, but theyre actually meth pills, Martin said. We do know that the cartels are using the same routes that theyve used for the last hundred years, theyre using the same transportation routes, Martin said. Its dangerous for adults, and its definitely dangerous for children, Martin said.

DETROIT – When Joseph Piersante was shot while working with the Drug Enforcement Administration, his life changed forever. Piersante’s job as a DEA agent took him to Afghanistan as part of the FAST Team. “These drug labs, they (the Taliban) fiercely defend them and there all behind enemy lines.”In 2009, while overseas, Piersante was shot in the head and lost his eyesight. “I had a frontal lobe brain injury because the bullet went to the front of my brain. I had two ruptured eye globes and two detached retinas, in which resulted in the brain injury, resulting in the craniotomy,” he said.

More than medication is being collected during Saturday's National Prescription Drug Take Back Day. For the first time, vaping devices and cartridges also are being accepted for disposal. The federal Drug Enforcement Administration says the change stemmed from concerns across about illnesses and death associated with vaping and the high rate of vaping among young people. More than 1,600 people, many of them teens and adults, have been sickened in a national vaping illness outbreak that appears to have started in March. Now in its 10th year with twice-yearly collections, the administration's Drug Take Back day has collected more than 11 million pounds of expired, unused and unwanted prescription medications.

Tyler Skaggs #45 of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim delivers a pitch in the first inning during a MLB game against the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre on June 18, 2019 in Toronto, Canada. (CNN) - A top public relations official with the Los Angeles Angels provided oxycodone to Tyler Skaggs, and abused the drug with him before the pitcher died earlier this year, the employee's attorney told CNN on Saturday. ESPN reported that Eric Kay, the Angels' director of communications, also gave the DEA the names of five other players who he believed were using opiates while with the Angels team. "The Angels maintain a strict, zero tolerance policy regarding the illicit use of drugs for both players and staff," he said. Skaggs family attorney Rusty Hardin said the family appreciates the work that law enforcement is doing.

These warning letters come just months after the FDA issued a similar series of warnings to other opioid-selling website operators. The online networks that received the new warning letters, sent earlier this month, are Divyata, Euphoria Healthcare Pvt Ltd., JCM Dropship and Meds4U. The letters call for the website operators to immediately stop illegally selling the opioids to consumers in the United States. We remain committed to using all available regulatory and enforcement tools to stop the illicit flow of opioids online." Warning letters were also sent to dozens of websites last year on two separate occasions.

WJLA via CNNCOLUMBUS, Ohio - One Ohio county had an "unusually high number" of overdose deaths in a little over a day, the county's coroner said. "As of about 10 am this morning we have had 10 people die of overdoses in about 26 hours," Franklin County Coroner Dr. Anahi Ortiz said on Facebook Sunday. The last peak of overdoses that the coroner's office posted about was in August 12, when six people died in less than 24 hours. That same year, the Drug Enforcement Administration issued a national alert that said "drug incidents and overdoses related to fentanyl are occurring at an alarming rate." In 2017, Franklin County set up a 3-year Opiate Action Plan to combat the opiate epidemic in the state.

The Drug Enforcement Administration is investigating after cocaine was shipped to several stores in western Washington