You’ve probably seen the dramatic photo of the Ohio couple slouched, overdosed, and passed out in the front seats of a car, with a little kid sitting in the back seat.  (View the video here)

Even if you haven’t seen that picture, images and words of America’s opioid overdose epidemic have captured headlines and TV news feeds for the last several years. 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently came out with controversial proposed guidelines for opioid prescribing through a process that critics say may harm pain patients and is based on relatively low-grade evidence.

Governor Baker’s plan to increase opioid education, which he announced on Nov. 9 with the deans of the state’s four medical schools, gets it only half right.

This week’s grim report about rising suicide and overall death rates among white, middle-aged Americans contains a slim silver lining. Here it is:

Using a new brain scanning technology, neuroscientists at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have produced dramatic images showing how glial cells – cells derived from the immune system that live in the nervous system – get activated in chronic pain patients. The technology should not only help diagnose pain, but boost research into the novel idea of using an antibiotic and other anti-glial drugs to treat back pain. (Citation: Brain, March, 2015.)

(Letter to the Editor, published in The Boston Globe, January 1, 2015)

For several years now, pain researchers have been wondering about a question that lay folks, including federal government regulators, might dismiss as absurd: The idea that marijuana, far from creating more problems for people who use opioids (narcotics), might, at least in some cases, help prevent opioid overdoses.

U.S. District Court Judge Rya W. Zobel today disappointed anyone who expected her to quickly strike down Gov. Deval Patrick’s ban on the sale of the new pain reliever Zohydro. She declined to rule on the drug maker’s request to quickly but temporarily lift the ban, and is continuing to consider whether to lift the ban permanently.

In an unusual move, a coalition of activists and physicians, concerned about the problem of prescription pain-reliever abuse, yesterday asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to revoke its approval of a new type of opioid called Zohydro. The medication is expected to be on the market soon.