If you know someone is suffering from a substance use disorder, text "HELP" to 833234, or visit www.helplineIL.org.

All this week we are focusing on fentanyl. We begin with the writer and journalist Sam Quinones, author of “Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic” and “The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth.”

Donald Hutson is one of more than 430 inmates who have overdosed in state prisons since May 2017, according to internal data from the Missouri Department of Corrections. While there are many ways drugs are smuggled into prisons, DOC employees say internal corruption is a key part of the problem.

Experts often blame the painkiller fentanyl for skyrocketing overdose deaths among illegal drug users. Now a series of deaths at an Ohio hospital is raising questions about oversight in prescribing the drug. 

Illinois is joining several states in abandoning drug field testing by state police.