News

As the opioid epidemic continues to impact families and individuals across the state of Ohio, communities are working to find different ways to help combat addition in their areas.

It's an unfortunate reality hitting central Ohio. Mother's across the area dealing with the pull of addiction, thousands of new born’s feeling the effects. Now a new one of a kind clinic here in Columbus aims to help those mothers and their children and hopefully save lives.

President Donald Trump on Thursday announced that he would roll back regulations to allow state governments looking to access Medicaid funding for drug treatment centers with more than 16 beds. This news organization has covered all sides of the opioid and overdose spike, from impact on families to effect on public services. Here are seven of the most powerful consequences of overdoses on southwest Ohio.

As President Trump prepares to declare the opioids crisis a public health emergency, a new report outlines just how expensive that crisis is — in more ways than one. Opioid addiction, abuse and overdose deaths cost Ohio from $6.6 billion to $8.8 billion, according to a new report from the C. William Swank Program in Rural-Urban Policy at Ohio State University.

A young woman in recovery came to FOX 45 for help after she said a pharmacist denied to fill her prescription for the medicine that helps her maintain her sobriety. April Erion told FOX 45 it’s a generic form of the medicine Suboxone, and that the incident happened at the Walgreens store on Far Hills Avenue in Kettering.

Ten years, three months and two weeks ago, Brandon Roark decided to get clean. He's even got a tattoo inked on his arm, as a daily reminder. "I started smoking pot when I was 13," he said. "I did every other drug under the sun. Name one, did them all." Eventually, he overdosed, then fell into a weeks-long coma that left him in a wheelchair.

For more than five years, heroin has been brewing into an epidemic in Ohio and leaving a deadly toll in its wake. Three people are dying a day – every day – on average in Ohio, state statistics show. That number is just those who died from heroin. When other drugs such as pills (a common precursor to heroin) are factored in, the number of deaths jumps to seven a day.