fentanyl

Long before the coronavirus jumped from an animal to a human to start the global pandemic, western Pennsylvania was already grappling with another health crisis — the drug epidemic.

Pennsylvania’s auditor general says when his team set out to determine how much addiction to opioids—and in particular, the powerful synthetic drug fentanyl—costs Pennsylvania, they immediately ran into some problems.

A Pittsburgh mom has been sentenced in the death of her toddler daughter, which authorities say was due to the narcotic fentanyl found in the child's pink sippy cup.

Jhenea Pratt was sentenced Wednesday to five to 10 years in state prison.

The 24-year-old Pratt was convicted in June of involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment by an Allegheny County jury that rejected convicting her of first- or third-degree murder.

State police say an infant overdosed on fentanyl after his parents fell asleep while using the drug in a vehicle at their Pennsylvania home.

The 11-month-old boy was unconscious and not breathing when he was found around 6:30 p.m. Wednesday by a family member. Emergency responders administered the anti-overdose drug naloxone and he was taken to a hospital, where he remained Thursday.

Authorities say a Pennsylvania mother who admitted to letting her sons store fentanyl at her house has been sentenced to 300 hours of community service.

Federal prosecutors said Thursday that 60-year-old Dorothy McCracken was sentenced to 36 months of federal probation for conspiring to distribute fentanyl.

Federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania and seven other states with high drug overdose death rates will pursue even seemingly small synthetic opioid cases under a program announced  by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Midstate counties are charging more drug dealers who sell a fatal dose with a crime known as 'drug delivery resulting in death.'

Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts data shows York County tops the list, with 10 percent of the cases statewide.

Lancaster, Dauphin, Cumberland, Franklin, and Lebanon also rank among the top 10 counties.

Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman said some counties, including his, view the stricter interpretation of the state law as one more way to combat the opioid crisis.

Testing stamp bags seized by law enforcement can give almost real-time insight into what drugs are circulating in the community before a public health emergency hits.

Philadelphia wants to become the first U.S. city to allow supervised drug injection sites as a way to combat the opioid epidemic, officials announced Tuesday, saying they are seeking outside operators to establish one or more in the city.

For the first time since Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro took office in January, his office has filed charges of drug delivery resulting in death against an Allegheny County resident.

Eighteen members of a SWAT team are OK after they were exposed to a deadly chemical during a raid early Wednesday, Pittsburgh police said.

As the SWAT team entered the West End home, a table covered with powered drugs was overturned, sending what authorities believed to be a dangerous synthetic opioid called fentanyl wafting into the air, according to a criminal complaint.

Placing much of the blame on smoking, a study chronicling the ongoing health crisis in Appalachia has concluded that the 13-state region suffers from a growing disparity in infant mortality and life expectancy, two key indicators of "a nation's health and well-being."

A soccer player, an athlete and a drug dealer sat together in a half-circle in the center of the stage. Each character slumped in their chair, reflective and resigned, as they explained how their prescription drug addiction began.

In the audience were 9-12th grade students at Cornell High School. The district was chosen to participate in the Drug Enforcement Administration’s national 360 Strategy, being piloted for the first time in the Pittsburgh region.

Fentanyl deaths outranked those attributed to heroin last year for the first time in Allegheny County, according to data released Thursday by the medical examiner's office.

Coroners and medical examiners in all but one of the 10-county region reported spikes in drug overdose deaths from 2015 to 2016 -- up 44 percent in Allegheny County and 38 percent in Westmoreland County.

Allegheny County is on track to see a record number of fatal drug overdoses involving fentanyl in 2016. According to the Medical Examiner’s office, 114 overdose victims have been found to have the highly potent opioid in their systems, just eight shy of last year’s all-time record.

The prevalence of fentanyl among overdose victims has skyrocketed over the last three years. In all of 2013, just eight fatal overdoses involved fentanyl.