[photo] A Walgreens in Boston.

An investigation by Attorney General Maura Healey found that some Walgreens pharmacies failed to monitor patients' drug use patterns and didn't use sound professional judgment when dispensing opioids and other controlled substances - a concern because of soaring overdose deaths in Massachusetts.

Walgreens agreed to pay $200,000 and follow certain procedures for dispensing opioids, in a settlement filed Wednesday in Suffolk Superior Court.

"Our records show," Walgreens spokesman Phil Caruso said in an e-mail, "that the prescriptions in question were dispensed to patients for a legitimate medical purpose and issued by licensed practitioners," suggesting the drugs were not diverted to the black market.

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Will lawmakers gut key parts of marijuana law?

A marijuana joint was rolled.

Marijuana legalization advocates fear the Massachusetts Legislature, which has already delayed the opening of pot shops, will now gut several key parts of the law approved by 1.8 million voters in November.

Public comments from Senate President Stanley C. Rosenberg about potential changes are setting off alarm bells among backers.

Rosenberg has raised the prospect of lawmakers sharply increasing the marijuana tax rate, lowering the 12-plant-per-household limit on homegrowing pot, and even raising the legal age for purchase, possession, and use up from 21.

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In a grim indicator of the toll the opioid crisis is taking on children, a program is being launched in Massachusetts specifically to help newborns, infants, and toddlers with addicted parents.

Health officials say they believe it's the first such early-intervention program in the state to target these children, some of whom were born drug-addicted.

The government-funded initiative will pay for weekly home visits to 36 low-income families in New Bedford, a South Coast community where the number of children born with opiates in their bloodstreams is four times the state average.

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Law enforcement and veterinary officials are planning an outreach campaign to educate veterinarians about a new frontier in the opioid epidemic: people so desperate for drugs that they take medication that had been prescribed to pets.

"The misuse of pet medication has serious safety implications - for people and animals," said Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan, in a letter that will be printed in the Massachusetts Veterinary Medical Association newsletter this week. "Educating people about the signs of drug misuse, available treatment resources and how to properly store and dispose of all medications is a crucial part of helping to stem the tide of overdoses and death."

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[photo] (Debee Tlumacki for The Boston Globe) Paul Jehle, pastor of the New Testament Church of Cedarville, shook hands with recovering addict Justin Todd at a Project Outreach drop-in center hosted by the church in Plymouth.

One in a series of occasional articles about opiate abuse and its consequences.

It took multiple applications of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, Paul Hachey of Plymouth recalled, to revive him in late September. The 38-year-old was "dead" from an OxyContin overdose for three minutes before he slipped back to life, he said.

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[photo] A marijuana bud.

Across New England, two issues appear to be driving legislatures this year - - and they both have to do with drugs.

States are grappling with the emergence of marijuana legalization. But the region is also the epicenter of the opioid crisis, with overdose rates in New Hampshire among the highest in the country.

These two debates - separate, but not unrelated - transcend party. Marijuana legalization efforts have been supported by Democrats and Republicans, but none of the region's six governors fully support recreational use of the drug. On the opioid crisis as well, there is bipartisan consensus about the importance of the issue - as well as the fact there's no silver bullet to solve the problem.

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Holyoke has a number of old mill buildings that Mayor Alex B. Morse believes would make an excellent location for the industry.

HOLYOKE - Vacant mill buildings along a series of canals serve as constant reminders of this impoverished city's halcyon days as the Paper City of the World. But the mayor has a distinctly 21st-century plan for the old factories.

Alex B. Morse imagines marijuana growing in them.

Morse, the 27-year-old wunderkind who has been in office for more than five years , believes his hometown is on the upswing, with the lowest rates of crime and unemployment in many years. But the city, with a poverty rate almost three times the state average, requires an infusion of industry. And the state's nascent recreational marijuana business, he says, would be a perfect fit.

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WORCESTER - Last year was another rough year in the fight against opioid addiction, and Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. had some numbers to prove it at a forum Monday night at Worcester Technical High School.

The district attorney said there were 148 overdose deaths in Worcester County last year, and he cautioned that as toxicology test results come back, that number could still rise. He said for four years that number has been in the triple digits, and said it has impacted the cities and the suburbs. He said that in nearly three quarters of those overdose deaths, the powerful drug fentanyl played a role.

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Massachusetts lawmakers have already shown they're willing to tinker with the marijuana legalization law passed by voters in November. But for now, at least, it's legal for adults 21 and older to grow marijuana plants at home: Six plants per person and 12 per household. (Note: Home growing is legal indoors only in Massachusetts.)

Curious about how to get started? The Boston Public Library has a perhaps surprising number of books about pot, including several volumes on home growing. They include:

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[photo] MJ Freeway, a Denver company whose tracking software is used by hundreds of marijuana companies to comply with state regulations, said its main servers and backup system each went down Sunday morning and remained offline as of Monday afternoon.

Marijuana shops across the country, including seven medical dispensaries in Massachusetts, are being affected by the apparent hack of a sales and inventory system widely used in the cannabis industry.

Two medical marijuana dispensaries in the state suggested patients delay their appointments until the system was back up or a fix is in place.

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In a state that just legalized the recreational use of marijuana, can field sobriety tests used to determine whether drivers are drunk also be administered to demonstrate that a person is too high to operate a motor vehicle?

The state Supreme Judicial Court on Friday took up that question in a case that is being closely watched by police and advocates for marijuana legalization.

The justices also heard arguments over whether police officers can give jurors their opinion of whether a driver is drugged on marijuana.

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Maxwell Baker wanted to be a doctor. His father, a physician himself, said he would have been a great one.

"He was remarkably brilliant," said Dr. James L. Baker of Holden. "And he had compassion."

But Maxwell also had an addiction, one that he battled and managed to tame in the last two years of his life. He fell deeply in love, was taking pre-med classes in college and was filled with energy and purpose. Two days before Christmas, he told his dad that his goal was to treat addicts and educate society about substance abuse.

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[photo]

Lieutenant Michael Pappalardo said the 10-month-old girl's family is cooperating with an investigation that includes state child-protection authorities.

METHUEN - A 10-month-old girl who narrowly survived after ingesting fentanyl is the latest victim of an opioid epidemic that has been blamed for hundreds of deaths in Massachusetts.

Police were called to the baby's home shortly before 12:30 p.m. Saturday when the girl was having trouble breathing. She was rushed to Lawrence General Hospital, where she stopped breathing twice and had to be resuscitated. She was later flown by helicopter to Tufts Medical Center in Boston and was listed Monday in stable condition, according to police.

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MILLBURY - After barely drawing a quorum of 100 voters, with an unofficial count of 108, special town meeting voters approved zoning bylaws Tuesday to restrict the location of methadone and other medication-assisted drug treatment centers and to impose a moratorium on recreational marijuana outlets until May 31, 2018.

Both articles received a two-thirds majority to pass, according to Town Moderator John M. Bartosiewicz. A vote count was not taken.

Article 3, which established a temporary moratorium on marijuana establishments and the sale or distribution of marijuana and marijuana products, was supported by the Planning Board after its public hearing on the measure earlier in the evening.

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Giving away -- or "gifting"-- up to one ounce of marijuana is now legal in Massachusetts, but are some people pushing the new law too far?

Days after Governor Charlie Baker signed a measure delaying the opening of recreational marijuana retail shops statewide by six months, a budding entrepreneur took to Craigslist to offer people a backdoor approach to getting their hands on some pot - one that authorities say would violate the new law.

In an ad posted to the website titled "Bud, weed, marijuana, cannabis," a person who identified himself as "Corey" listed for sale empty plastic bags ranging in price from $20 to $325. Depending on which bag is purchased, the seller promised to include a "gift" of marijuana inside.

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Medical Marijuana advocates rallied before a public meeting on proposed changes to the rules.

Proposed changes to the state's medical marijuana program do not address problems that hamper people from registering for the program, according to patients and advocates who testified Tuesday at a crowded public hearing in Boston.

The proposals are part of a larger initiative by the Baker administration to review and update all state regulations, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which oversees the marijuana program.

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Senator Elizabeth Warren is leading a new effort to make sure vendors working with marijuana businesses don't have their banking services taken away.

As marijuana shops sprout in states that have legalized the drug, they face a critical stumbling block: lack of access to the kind of routine banking services other businesses take for granted.

US Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, is leading an effort to make sure vendors working with legal marijuana businesses, from chemists who test marijuana for harmful substances to firms that provide security, don't have their banking services taken away.

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Doctors are being more careful with opioid prescriptions as addiction and its effects get more recognition.

More than half of doctors across America are curtailing opioid prescriptions, and nearly 1 in 10 have stopped prescribing the drugs, according to a new nationwide online survey. But even as physicians retreat from opioids, some seem to have misgivings: More than one-third of the respondents said the reduction in prescribing has hurt patients with chronic pain.

The survey, conducted for The Boston Globe by the SERMO physicians social network, offers fresh evidence of the changes in prescribing practices in response to the opioid crisis that has killed thousands in New England and elsewhere around the country. The deaths awakened fears of addiction and accidental overdose, and led to state and federal regulations aimed at reining in excessive prescribing.

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LUBBOCK, Texas - Across from a sprawling cotton field, among mobile homes in varying states of decay, one stood out: a double-wide with a new, expansive metal garage and the only paved driveway on the dead-end street.

It was here that an unemployed former computer repairman with a bad back ran what a drug informant called the biggest fentanyl ring in Lubbock. All Sidney Lanier needed was a computer and an elementary knowledge of chemistry to order shipments of the potent synthetic opioid from China and turn it into a highly profitable - and dangerous - street drug.

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Action by the governor and legislature doesn't change a new law that allows adults 21 and older to possess and use limited amounts of recreational marijuana and grow as many as a dozen pot plants in their homes, but it pushes back the timetable for opening retail marijuana stores from the beginning of 2018 until the middle of that year.

BOSTON (AP) - Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker signed a bill Friday aimed at delaying by up to six months the opening of marijuana shops in the state until mid-2018.

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