Regulation designed to reduce prescription opioid pain medications in New Jersey may not have had the intended effect: A Rutgers analysis of Medicaid records found that progression from short-term to long-term opioid use did not decline following new legislation capping initial prescriptions for acute pain to five days. Total new prescriptions fell at a monthly rate of 0.76 per 10,000 after the rule took effect, but they had been declining at a monthly rate of 1.62 per 10,000 before policy implementation. (It’s unclear whether this change somehow stemmed from the regulations or from the fact that prescriptions had already fallen so that they couldn’t keep declining so quickly.) To read the full story.