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Layla Kegg’s mother, back home after three weeks who knows where, says she’s done with heroin, ready for rehab and wants to be part of her daughter’s life. But Layla has heard all of this before and doesn’t believe a single word. Layla’s trust was broken long ago, after years of watching her mother cycle in and out of addiction and rehab. And now this latest discovery: “I found a needle in your purse the other day,” says Layla, seated at her grandmother’s kitchen table, her arms crossed. “And Mamaw found two more in the dryer.” (Levin, 5/31)

Three times Ada Williams delivered children by caesarean section. Three times doctors prescribed her opioid painkillers. When she was preparing to deliver her fourth child by C-section, her doctor told her that Cleveland Clinic’s Fairview Hospital was moving away from that. “I said, ‘No! You’ve gotta give me the narcotics because it’s a C-section, it’s painful,’ ” the 37-year-old says. (Reddy, 6/3)

In the health care industry, there are few brands more well known than Johnson & Johnson. The maker of consumer staples ranging from Band-Aids to baby shampoo has faced a number of controversies in its 133-year history. Now it is contesting charges that it contributed to the nation's opioid epidemic. (Horsley, 6/3)

As the first of hundreds of lawsuits against the companies that made, marketed and distributed opioids went to trial in Oklahoma last week, state and local officials here are beginning to consider just what a settlement with Big Pharma might look like. James Boffetti, associate attorney general, is director of the division of legal counsel in the Attorney General’s office, which has filed civil lawsuits in Merrimack County Superior Court against two opioid manufacturers and two distributors. This Friday, there’s a hearing in the state's case against Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, to set a trial date, Boffetti said. “We want to do it much earlier than the defendants do,” he said. (Wickham, 6/1)

Plans to include a new tax on opioids in the Connecticut state budget drew renewed opposition Saturday from the pharmaceutical industry, a potential complication for the budget debate scheduled Monday for the General Assembly. A national coalition of pharmaceutical distributors warned the tax ultimately would be paid by patients, many of whom need prescription-opioid drugs to manage severe pain. (Phaneuf, 6/1)

Emergency room visits and hospitalizations for opioid-related overdoses in Georgia jumped 14 percent between 2017 and 2018, rising from 4,934 to 5,621, according to preliminary Georgia Department of Public Health figures released to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. During the same time frame, deaths from such overdoses dropped statewide by nearly 12 percent, falling from 1,043 to 920. Atlanta area’s four largest counties — Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett — each saw fewer such deaths. (Redmon, 5/31)