Brian Mann

As recently as last month, Surfside, Fla., officials were ordering changes at Champlain Towers South. But the demands never focused on the building's fundamental soundness.

There are 152 people still missing from a Florida residential building that collapsed last week. Residents are demanding answers to why the section fell, and are coping with the loss of loved ones.

An engineering report in Oct. 2018 warned of "major structural damage" in the Florida building that collapsed last week. The next month, a town inspector said the building was in "very good shape."

The 2018 report found major damage to the concrete structural slab below the pool deck and warned that extensive repairs would be needed soon. The mayor is considering evacuating a sister building.

President Biden wants to eliminate sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine that led to the incarceration of far more Black and Hispanic Americans. Critics are skeptical of the reform.

American communities were devastated by addiction and the war on drugs. Now they're struggling for a future but the damage runs deep. Healing and hope often clash with overdose deaths and poverty.

Researchers know how to curb the risks of overdose and disease among drug users, but policymakers are reluctant to allow public health measures that include needle exchanges and access to safer drugs.

Researchers and doctors say they know how to curb harm caused by addiction and the spread of dangerous drugs. But lawmakers are reluctant to allow needle exchanges and access to safer narcotics.

President Nixon called for an "all-out offensive" against drugs and addiction. The U.S. is now rethinking policies that led to mass incarceration and shattered families while drug deaths kept rising.

A bankruptcy judge cleared a plan for final vote by creditors of Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, that would release the Sacklers and their financial empire from liability for the opioid crisis.