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Kansas is moving to increase its legal age for buying cigarettes, electronic cigarettes and other tobacco products to 21 from 18 after the federal government and most other states already have done it. The state Senate approved a bill to raise the age Tuesday on a 28-11 vote, sending it Gov. Laura Kelly. The House had approved it earlier this month on a 68-53 vote. (3/29)

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison personally opened his state’s case against Juul Labs on Tuesday, accusing the e-cigarette maker of using “slick products, clever ads and attractive flavors” to hook children on nicotine as the first of thousands of cases against the company reached trial. Minnesota is seeking more than $100 million in damages, accusing Washington, D.C.-based Juul of unlawfully targeting young people to get a new generation addicted to nicotine. (Karnowski, 3/28)

Senate Democrats on Tuesday made their most forceful push yet against narratives linking immigration and the fentanyl crisis, slamming Republicans for their attempts to entangle the two issues. Data shows the vast majority of fentanyl enters the U.S. through the cars of American citizens, a fact highlighted repeatedly by Democrats as GOP lawmakers increasingly cast blame at Mexico in the fight against fentanyl. "Some are pushing the narrative that asylum seekers are smuggling fentanyl across the border when the facts tell a different story,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. (Beitsch, 3/28)

The biotech company BTNX says it is shipping out new test strips this week that detect the presence of xylazine, an animal sedative that officials say is increasingly being mixed with fentanyl. As with fentanyl test strips, these pieces of paper have a reagent that can help users detect whether a drug has any xylaxine in it. Commonly called “tranq” or “tranq dope,” xylazine has not been approved for human use. The drug has heavy sedative effects like an opioid but isn’t one, so it doesn’t respond to the opioid overdose antidote, naloxone, also known as Narcan. (Kounang, 3/28)

It was late 2020 when Jason Bienert noticed unusual wounds among a half-dozen of the fentanyl users he works with as a nurse in northeast Maryland. Unlike the red, swollen abscesses he was used to seeing on people who inject illicit opioids, these were painful ulcers that started small and dark before consuming the surrounding skin and tissue. Some wounds led to amputation. Others were life threatening. The culprit was xylazine, an animal tranquilizer that has since pervaded the region’s drug supply, compounding the opioid crisis and leaving people who survive disabled. (Schukar and Wernau, 3/28)

After someone lives through an opioid overdose, taking the medication buprenorphine lowers their risk of death if they OD again, a new study found. Buprenorphine is a medication used to treat opioid use disorder. Researchers with the American Journal of Preventative Medicine (AJPM) found that receiving the medicine after an overdose causes a 62% reduction in risk of death in a subsequent opioid overdose. (Rumpf, 3/28)