The AP reported “Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Friday that evidence recently made public makes clear that drugmakers were responsible for the deadly opioid crisis and that they had lied about the addictiveness of their painkillers.” DeWine “urged the companies to move quickly to settle pending lawsuits seeking to hold them accountable for the epidemic in light of troves of new documents made public because of those suits.” US drug czar Jim Carroll “said federal data released in conjunction with the suits that showed how drugmakers and distributors increased shipments of opioid painkillers across the U.S. as the addiction crisis accelerated from 2006 to 2012 will be invaluable as governments continue to respond.”

CDC data show epicenter of opioid epidemic moving from rural areas to cities

The Wall Street Journal reports the front lines of America’s opioid epidemic appear to be shifting from rural areas to the cities, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which show the death rate from overdose in urban areas overtook that of rural areas in 2016.

WPost chronicles legal battle that led to public release of DEA database on prescription drugs

The Washington Post recounts how a once-secret Drug Enforcement Administration database that tracked “the manufacture and distribution of prescription drugs” become public “after a protracted legal battle in federal court.” The journey of the Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System data “into sunlight began with lawsuits by drug-ravaged communities, and took the final steps through legal action by The Washington Post and the Charleston, W.Va., Gazette-Mail.”

From the news release of the American Association for Justice.