About 70,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year — about 14% fewer than the previous year, according to preliminary government data.

The current Kratom Control Act in Illinois from 2014 only prohibits its sale to minors under the age of 18, but it does not require any labeling, testing standards, licensing or additional taxation.

Vending machines containing free Narcan will be placed at five CTA stations throughout Chicago as part of a six-month pilot initiative between the CTA and Cook County Health.

The vending machines will be located at the 47th Street Red Line station, Wilson Red and Purple Line station, Jefferson Park Blue Line station, Harlem/Lake Green Line station and the Central Park Pink Line station.

The Narcan newsstands, which were officially launched during a harm reduction event Wednesday, will be at four locations in Uptown.

Two of the most closely followed measures aim to protect the drinking water of a wide swath of central Illinois and boost the pension benefits for first responders in Chicago.

The bill would allow trained library workers to administer opioid antagonists to potential overdose victims on library grounds, in the immediate vicinity of libraries and at library events.

The proposal, House Bill 1910, does not provide for funding from the state, but it stipulates the opioid antagonists may be supplied by local county health departments. Training library staff would be overseen by organizations selected by the Illinois Department of Public Health.

Amid the flurry of legislation was a measure prohibiting state universities from admitting students based on familial and donor ties, an expansion of the ban on sales of e-cigarettes to minors and a bill prohibiting stores from stocking alcoholic beverages near non-alcoholic lookalikes.

Experts reacted cautiously. One described the decline as relatively small, and said it should be thought more as part of a leveling off than a decrease. Another noted that the last time a decline occurred — in 2018 — drug deaths shot up in the years that followed.

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.

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.