Latest News

 

 

 

(Max Pemberton is a consultant psychiatrist and columnist for the Daily Mail)

Some days I wonder if I’m going mad – and you don’t need to be a psychiatrist to know that’s not a good sign. I work in a specialist NHS service for people experiencing first episode psychosis – young people at their most vulnerable, teetering on the edge of severe and enduring mental illness, some of them already sliding towards schizophrenia. Day in and day out, I watch how cannabis has destroyed people’s minds. It is, frankly, heart-breaking. So you can perhaps imagine how I feel when those same patients mention, almost in passing, that a private doctor has prescribed them cannabis. Not for cancer pain, not for the muscle spasms of multiple sclerosis, not for the intractable epilepsy of a child for whom nothing else has worked (the conditions where there is at least a credible clinical argument) but for their mental health. For depression. For anxiety.

I’m sorry, what? We are handing this stuff out on prescription for the very conditions it is known to cause and worsen. It is, and I do not use the phrase lightly, a prescription for disaster. Despite the protests of the powerful pro-cannabis lobby, it has now been proved beyond any reasonable doubt that cannabis use is directly associated with depression, anxiety, psychosis and avolition, a grinding loss of motivation that can hollow a person out completely.

Just recently I had a patient who had a history of psychosis. She’d been watching TikTok and become convinced that cannabis was the answer to her ADHD. A private clinic had given her a prescription without checking her notes, without calling me, and without calling her GP. It came out only by chance, in conversation. I sat there absorbing this information, thinking: a private doctor has prescribed her a powerful drug that is directly contraindicated for her condition, without contacting a single one of the clinicians actually responsible for her care. How is this right?

The latest figures, published in the Times, should alarm anyone who cares about how medicine in this country is practised. Since cannabis was legalised for medical use, just ten private doctors have signed off more than half of all cannabis-based prescriptions in the country. Ten doctors. One consultant alone accounted for one in every ten prescriptions nationwide, getting through nearly 46,000 in the first five months of last year. Do the arithmetic and that works out at roughly one every two working minutes. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about how rigorous those consultations could possibly have been.

To understand how we’ve ended up here, it’s worth remembering that the story of medical cannabis in this country started in a genuinely sympathetic place. In 2018 the government legalised cannabis-based medicines following the case of Billy Caldwell, a severely epileptic child experiencing hundreds of seizures a day, for whom cannabis had worked when almost everything else had failed. The public outrage when his medication was confiscated at the border was entirely justified, and it was right to change the law. Cannabis does have legitimate medical uses for certain rare epilepsies, for chronic pain, and for patients who have exhausted every other option. Nobody sensible disputes this. What nobody could have anticipated was quite how rapidly and recklessly that door would be shoved open. Many doctors said so at the time, of course. When the law changed in 2018, there were plenty of voices in the medical profession warning that this was the thin end of the wedge; that however carefully the legislation was drafted, a private market would find ways to exploit it, that the definition of clinical need would be stretched until it was meaningless, and that the result would be cannabis available on medical prescription to more or less anyone who wanted it. Those concerns were dismissed as scaremongering. They were, it turns out, entirely justified. You can now claim some suitably vague condition, sit through a brief online consultation, and walk away with a prescription for cannabis at a potency you would struggle to obtain from the finest drug dealer in the country. The word ‘medical’ does a great deal of heavy lifting in all of this.

The prescription numbers tell the story. From a standing start in 2018, monthly figures climbed slowly at first, then accelerated sharply, reaching around 10,000 a month by mid-2022 and surging to nearly 100,000 a month by early 2025. Almost none of this growth has been driven by epilepsy or chronic pain. At Mamedica, one of the largest private cannabis clinics in the country, over half of its 12,000 patients are being prescribed cannabis for psychiatric conditions. (Mamedica says that cannabis treatment can be ‘game changing’ for these patients and has led to improvements in mood, hope and functioning. Its CEO says that ‘At Mamedica, every patient undergoes full clinical assessment, shared decision-making and ongoing monitoring under strict governance. This is structured, accountable medicine, not volume prescribing.’)

Professor Sir Robin Murray of King’s College London, who has spent his career studying the catastrophic relationship between cannabis and psychosis, has been watching all of this with undisguised alarm. He has warned bluntly that certain private clinics are ‘causing harm to the people they are claiming to help’. But it’s another observation of his that really cuts to the heart of the matter. ‘Usually,’ he has pointed out, ‘if a person has a medical condition, they see a doctor who specialises in a particular area of medicine, for example, respiratory or kidney disease. After diagnosis, the doctor prescribes from a range of treatments’. That, of course, is how medicine is supposed to work. A condition is identified, an appropriate specialist assesses it, and a treatment is chosen on the basis of evidence. What is happening in these clinics is the precise opposite: the treatment comes first, the condition barely matters, and the evidence is nowhere to be seen.

A quarter of psychosis cases in South London were associated with skunk, according to Murray’s research at the Institute of Psychiatry. Oxford University has shown it raises the risk of depression in teenagers by 40 per cent. None of this is seriously contested, it is settled science. Last month a major review in the Lancet Psychiatry screened nearly 6,000 studies and found that cannabinoids showed no significant benefit for anxiety, PTSD, psychotic disorders or OCD. For depression – the single most common reason cited for prescription across most legalised markets – there were no randomised controlled trials to look at. None at all. Not a thin evidence base. No evidence base whatsoever. And still these prescriptions keep on coming.

Then there is the question of what, exactly, is being prescribed, because it is emphatically not the careful, pharmaceutical-grade product the word ‘medical’ implies. Many of these prescriptions are for high-potency products with THC content exceeding 30 per cent. One strain, cheerfully named Space Cake, clocks in at 34 per cent THC. Street skunk – the very stuff Sir Robin Murray and colleagues have spent years linking to psychosis – typically contains between 14 and 16 per cent. So we are prescribing considerably stronger products to people who are already mentally unwell, with no credible evidence that it does them any good. If this were happening with any other substance, there would be a public inquiry.

Make no mistake, the human cost of all this is not abstract. Oliver Robinson was 34 years old, a former property developer from Bury in Greater Manchester. He had been struggling with depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety, and was already under the care of NHS and Priory psychiatrists, both of whom were strongly opposed to him using cannabis, when he turned to a private clinic. A video consultation with Curaleaf was all it took. The clinic based its decision on a GP summary that was nine months out of date. It never contacted his other treating psychiatrists. It prescribed him cannabis. What followed was 18 months of deterioration as his dependency took hold, eventually costing him a £1,000 a month, until he could bear it no longer and was found dead at his home in November 2023.

The inquest, concluded in January this year, made for grim reading. Coroner Catherine McKenna ruled that the prescription had ‘probably contributed to his death’ and had ‘acted as an obstacle’ to him receiving appropriate psychiatric care, giving the drug, in her words, a sense of legitimacy that made it harder for him to engage with the clinicians who were actually trying to help him. She issued a Regulation 28 Prevention of future deaths report to Curaleaf, finding that the prescribing doctor was a children’s and adolescent psychiatrist with no experience of treating adults with Oliver’s complex presentation. His brother Alexander said afterwards that he believed profit had been prioritised over his brother’s life. It is thought to be the first time a coroner has formally linked a private cannabis prescription to a patient’s death. It will not, I fear, be the last. Sir Robin Murray, responding to the verdict, was characteristically direct. These clinics, he said, are ‘nothing more than drug dealers for the middle classes’. Some clinics seem almost proud of how easy they make it to get a prescription. The industry, when challenged, responds with the usual blizzard of patient testimonials and wellness language, insisting people have every right to try whatever they believe is helping them. Let’s be honest about what this is: it’s retail with a prescription pad.

Of course, cannabis has over the past decade acquired a sort of halo. It became the anti-establishment option, the natural remedy, the thing your GP would never prescribe because of Big Pharma and vested interests and all the rest of it. It has latched onto the broader conversation about mental health in the same way recreational ketamine has managed to: cynically and with considerable commercial savvy. The moment it put on a white coat, a great deal of critical thinking went out of the window.

To its credit, the NHS has stayed sceptical. There are only around 5,000 NHS prescriptions for licensed cannabis medicines each year, limited to conditions with genuine evidence behind them, and Nice has declined to recommend it for the vast majority of conditions the private clinics are happily treating. So the private market has simply flourished in the gap, turning NHS caution into a marketing opportunity and positioning itself as the enlightened alternative to a stuffy, out-of-touch establishment. It’s a cynical trick and it has worked spectacularly.

I’ve sat with families trying to make sense of how their bright, funny, perfectly healthy child ended up psychotic. I’ve watched patients who started smoking skunk as teenagers and never quite came back. And now I find myself watching those same patients – or patients just like them – being sent home with a prescription for something considerably stronger than what broke them in the first place, signed off by a doctor churning out one every two working minutes. It’s utter madness. It really is.

SOURCE: https://spectator.com/article/the-madness-of-using-cannabis-to-treat-mental-health/

Filed under: Brain and Behaviour,Cannabis/Marijuana,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Marijuana and Medicine,Mental Health,Prevention and Intervention,Treatment and Addiction,UK :

Combining love and boundaries in my parenting, and guiding my child with care, not with punishment, are the most valuable lessons I learned in just three days of the Strong Families Programme.

My name is Roya*, and two months ago, I joined the Strong Families Programme, where we learned practical lessons about positive parenting, stress management, and understanding our children’s emotions. I especially enjoyed the calm breathing exercise, a simple practice to bring peace and relaxation. Sharing family challenges with other mothers made me realize that I am not alone and that together we can stay strong and support one another.

This new understanding has changed my relationship with my daughter. I realized this when one day I couldn’t afford to buy her a new school bag. In the past, she might have cried or shouted, but this time she stayed calm and said, “Mother, I will go to school with the same bag this year.”

Her reaction touched me deeply and showed how much she has learned. This new understanding between us is priceless and gives me a feeling of peace and pride as a mother. It makes me confident that she will go out and make healthy decisions in her life. I believe more families should have the chance to join programmes like Strong Families. Many parents face stress and family problems, and this programme shows simple ways to build healthier children’s behavior and a happier, more peaceful home.

About the Strong Families Programme (SFP)

Through funding support by the Republic of Korea, UNODC successfully scaled up the global Strong Families Program (SFP) (A family skills drug use prevention programme for families living in stressful and challenged settings) in Kabul and Nangarhar provinces, adapted to the Afghan context and reaching 180 highly vulnerable families from low-resource, internally displaced, poppy-farming communities.

Through structured sessions, participating families gained practical skills to manage stress, strengthen parenting practices, prevent violence, and foster positive, age-appropriate family dynamics. As a result, the intervention led to improved emotional well-being, stronger caregiver-child relationships, and enhanced household resilience, all of which are protective factors against drug use initiation.

These achievements are expected to directly contribute to national drug prevention priorities and integrated into broader family support and drug prevention initiatives, ensuring long-term sustainability and wider impact.

Source: https://www.unodc.org/coafg/en/stories/2026/strong-families-porgramme-a-family-based-drug-use-prevention-intervention-helping-mothers-to-have-a-strong-bonding-with-their-children.html

Filed under: Crime/Violence/Prison,Culture,Drug use-various effects,Health,Latest News,Others (International News),Parents,Prevention and Intervention,Treatment and Addiction,Youth :

Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), Finland

by Senior Researcher Karoliina Karjalainen – Publication date9.4.2026

Young people’s drug-related deaths and overdoses (non-fatal poisonings) are significantly more common among young people who have experienced diverse problems, such as a parent’s substance use or mental disorders or long-term financial difficulties in their childhood home. For some young people, placement in out-of-home care may reduce these risks, even though the overall risk for young people in out-of-home care is higher than for the rest of the population.

This information is revealed by a recent study carried out in the Out of Despair project. In the study, register data was used to monitor all children born in Finland in 1991 and 1997 and their biological parents until the end of 2019. A total of over 124,000 children were included in the study.

Placement in out-of-home care increased the risk, but may also protect some young people

According to the results, the probability of drug-induced death or an overdose leading to hospitalisation was clearly higher among children or young people who had been placed in out-of-home care at some point before the age of majority than in the rest of the population. 

However, the link between the family’s diverse problems and drug-induced deaths was particularly visible among young people who had never been placed in out-of-home care. For example, a parent’s substance use problem increased the likelihood of drug-induced death or overdose only among those who lived their entire childhood at home, whereas among young people in out-of-home care, a parent’s substance-use problem did not increase the likelihood of drug-related death or overdose compared to other young people in out-of-home care. This suggests that moving away from a harmful growth environment protects the young person. 

In addition to out-of-home placement, long-term financial difficulties in the family were independently linked to drug-induced deaths or overdoses among young people. 

“The result may indicate an accumulation of problems: mental health or substance use problems may affect the parents’ work ability and that way cause financial difficulties for the family and, at worst, lead to long-term poverty,” says Senior Researcher Karoliina Karjalainen from THL.

Prevention of drug-induced deaths requires help at an early stage

The study emphasises the importance of early support and multidisciplinary services, in particular. Close cooperation between substance use, mental health and social services as well as sufficient resources are important in order to support families in time. Access to substance use treatment should be improved for young people, for example, by offering opioid substitution treatment to minors, if necessary.

“The family’s diverse problems, other adverse childhood experiences and substance use may form a complex and intertwined bundle of problems in the lives of young people, and ultimately lead to serious consequences,” Karjalainen says.

“This is why prevention and early intervention are of primary importance, and sufficient timely and appropriate help should be available to families with children.”

The study has been published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Review.

Source: https://thl.fi/en/-/diverse-problems-in-the-family-increase-risk-of-drug-induced-deaths-among-young-people-placement-in-out-of-home-care-may-protect-some-young-people

Filed under: Drug use-various effects,Europe,Latest News,Others (International News),Parents,Youth :

(A position statement by NDPA, as at April 2026)

By Peter Stoker, C. Eng., M.I.C.E. (Retd) – Director – National Drug Prevention Alliance

At various times new suggestions are made for policy and practice in responding to drug misuse, addictions, treatment, education and prevention. Whilst these suggestions may derive from genuinely constructive attempts to improve the condition of drug misusers, and of society at large, they can sometimes be exploited by those who advocate liberalising policy and practice.

Two earlier such well-known examples where this kind of exploitation has been seen are known under the terms ‘human rights’ and ‘harm reduction’. Both these initiatives have a genuinely valid place in policy and practice, but both have also been called into quite different tactical ploys by liberalisation ‘influencers’. Another such example has been the attempts to replace the terms ‘misuse’ or ‘abuse’ by the more neutral term ‘use’ – this illustrates how the power of words as can be deployed to influence particular policy/practice attitudes and goals.

More recently, these same influencers have widened their approach to address the subject of ‘stigma’. Moves in this field have even developed so far as to include the establishment of an Anti-Stigma Institute, under the auspices of the Addiction Policy Forum, a Washington DC-based nonprofit organisation.

Drug addiction can be seen as the extremity of drug misuse, the possible end state of a progressive behaviour which started with curiosity, then experimentation, then occasional use, through regular use to what becomes, for some, a compulsion to use. This end state can be seen to affect literally millions of people worldwide. At some stage in this progression, a person may become victim to what has been defined as SUDs – Substance Use Disorders; these disorders may include not only health consequences but also eventual dissociation by the user’s friends, partners, relatives, employers, social service providers, child care agencies, housing agencies and more. Many people perceive SUDs as a moral failing, not just a bad decision, and their reaction may well be influenced by this judgement call.

In the context of perceived stigma, a harrowing account of how thing can go badly wrong for those experiencing SUDs was published in ‘Filtermag.org’ by Patricia A Roos, a sociologist whose son Alex died from a drug overdose in May 2015. Her article, dated September 2025, was entitled ‘Stigma from Medical Providers Contributed to My Son’s Overdose’. (Ref 1) Here are a few of the points made in her article, paraphrased for brevity:

Alex had many ‘protection privileges’ – white, middle-class, educated supportive parents and friendship circle, never abused, and yet he took a downward path of behaviour, firstly through anorexia, then in addiction … he resided in many ERs etc, sometimes encountering medical providers who helped him, but many times not – instead of empathic support he experienced chastisement for ‘bad choices’ and ‘lack of willpower ’… ‘drug-seeking behaviour’ … ‘lack of engagement’ and ‘denial’. Stigmatisation powered his downward spiral … he was labelled, blamed … in effect written off. Roos observes that while stigma is present in multiple institutions, it must be said that its presence in medical care is especially pronounced, insidious and devastating. Roos goes on to comment that it is ‘perhaps not surprising that medical providers stigmatise, making moral judgements when they should be making prognoses and decisions based on science, relying on culturally-induced assumptions of personal responsibility instead of their scientific knowledge’.

Roos applauds the work of Erving Goffman, a renowned sociologist, author of many publications which address, inter alia, the subject of stigmatisation. Perhaps most relevant here is his 1963 book ‘Stigma – Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity’. (Ref 2)

It should also be noted that towards the end of her article, Roos expresses support for ‘decriminalising  and regulating drugs’ and wider use of harm reduction initiatives. She also is scathing of the US Governments recent (2025) change of strategy and defunding, away from harm reduction, under the direction of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.

                                                       *        *       *       *

National bodies may strive to introduce order into stigmas around substance use disorder; for example, America’s NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse) have produced several papers around  this theme, one of which is entitled: ‘Addressing the Stigma that Surrounds Addiction’. (Ref 3)

On the other hand, critics of stigma can sometimes exhibit hastiness in dismissing all stigma as ‘bad’ – to go down this route would be to ignore that social stigma has always been a major factor in what controls and limits human behaviours, in the interest of society as a whole. As one observer put it “Stigmatisation is part of what makes humans social animals”.

In his 2025 book ‘What is it like to be an Addict?’ (Oxford University Press) (Ref 4), Owen Flanagan makes the key point that “… amongst the most important thing addicts say is that they are by no means blameless”.

As the review of Flanagan’s book concludes: “it is refreshing to read a book that refuses to dehumanise addicts by depriving them of responsibility or delegitimising the shame they feel for their actions”. In this context, it is worth reflecting on the fact that many drug misusers – including not a few addicts – achieve recovery and lasting sobriety without any help from anyone else – neither medical professionals nor AA groups play any part in the ability of these individuals to dig themselves out of the hole they were in.

In developing his thinking, Flanagan is sceptical of the tendency to medicalise all of life’s setbacks and sadnesses, and he goes on to make the constructive comment that dismissing the so-called ‘War on Drugs’ as a costly failure may be hasty – saying “… we can’t be sure that many addictions wouldn’t be worse in its absence”. Critics of prevention could do worse that contemplate on this observation.

And mention of prevention should remind us that addiction is only one part of the total experience of drug misuse – there are several phases of behaviour which come before addiction. It follows, therefore, that each of these phases may generate comments by those around the user – including what may seem to be just stigmatising comments – but are in fact a useful part of the self-recovering processes which enable individuals to recover.

Amongst those seeking to generate a more balanced view on stigma, an informal grouping of British specialists includes – amongst others – Professor Neil McKegany (Ref 5) – a prominent sociologist and leading researcher in the field of drug misuse, known for founding the Centre for Drug Misuse Research at the University of Glasgow in 1994; Deirdre Boyd, founder and head of DB Recovery Resources, which sustains ongoing working links with McLean Hospital, Massachusetts, and David Raynes, a Senior Adviser to the National Drug Prevention Alliance who was formerly a senior officer and drugs specialist with HM Customs and Excise (as it was known during his time).

Collating together some of the comments by these specialists on the subject of stigma …

McKeganey: “If one’s aim is to reduce prevalence of drug misuse, one needs to retain a view of drug use as a stigmatised activity” (by society as it stands) … “stigmatisation actually varies depending on the drug in question” – Cannabis, Cocaine, Heroin each attract different levels of stigma … “drug use can be stigmatised without the user being stigmatised i.e. moral judgement can stigmatise drug use but not the user”.

Boyd: “The greatest stigma is that which does not recognise addicts and their recovery … this takes recognition away from and is insulting to people who have altered their lives to stay that way and to give back to society.” … “Sadly, stigmatisation is often encountered with the medical profession itself”.(See later comments in this article, by Patricia S Roos) … “Stigma played a huge role in reducing tobacco use – adverts with children shaming parents who smoke, office workers expelled to smoke outdoors” … “stigma also pays a role in reducing alcohol use; images of drunken capering, of children abandoned, etc” (Recalling Hogarth’s 1751 image of ‘Beer Street’ and ‘Gin Lane’!)

Raynes: “Social stigma has for millennia been part of what controls and limits human behaviour.” … “This business of trying to remove social stigma from drug addiction and use, or from any antisocial behaviour, is in my view a trap, A very deliberate one … Don’t fall for it.”

                      *        *       *       *

In conclusion (for now) herein offered is an extended ‘quote’ from a paper written by an American doctor, Sally Satel. (Ref 6) This was published by John Hopkins University Press of Baltimore, as part of a larger paper entitled ‘Addiction Treatment Science and Policy for the Twenty First Century’ – and in it she nailed her colours firmly to the mast by entitling it ‘In Praise of Stigma’. Satel spoke on the value of constructive stigma as part of improving treatment effectiveness, but was roundly condemned for doing so. As she put it: “Clearly, I had committed heresy”.

Despite her much-voiced support for accessible, respectful and competent treatment, her support for stigma remained ‘a bridge too far’ for some. She resolutely commented “Why try to destigmatise irresponsibility that leads to ruptured families, ruined careers, and crime … we don’t have to neutralise the moral valence (valence meaning ‘capacity to classify’ e.g. ‘good-bad’) of addiction-fuelled behaviour to destigmatise the treatment process”.

She goes on to challenge some of the alleged benefits of eliminating stigma, as set forth by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (Ref 7) – as shown here following, in italics –  “… it will get more addicts into treatment/it will improve the availability of treatment/it will speed the development of medications” and “it will help addicts self-esteem”. A charitable evaluation of these allegations is that they seem to speak more from hope than from proven conviction.

Satel calls up McLean Hospital, Massachusetts, and in particular psychologist Gene Heyman, (Ref 8), who makes the powerful point that voluntary behaviour is mediated by the brain … motivation and self-control are acts of the brain. Recovery itself depends on willpower, and people have the capacity to transform themselves.

In the end, observes Satel, the de-stigmatisation campaign could be said to have its heart in the right place, but in her opinion its marksmanship is too sweeping, too uncontrolled, and thus tends to make things worse in its search for what could be better. As she says in closing her statement:

“Finally, even if we could somehow ‘untaint’ addiction, what would be the price? Stigmatisation is a normal part of human interaction, has a civilising effect on social life, and is often the basis of the antidrug messages we give our children … There is nothing unethical – and everything naturally and socially adaptive – about condemning the reckless and harmful behaviours that addicts commit. This need not negate our sympathy for them or our duty to provide care.”

       *        *       *       *

CONCLUSIONS:

This is a subject which will run and run, so it may be considered premature to attempt sweeping conclusions at this time. However, this writer offers the following as indicators of what might prove to be ‘route markers’ …

  • Stigma, when encountered, can be and should be assessed as either ‘constructive’ or ‘obstructive’ to interventions with drug misuse.
  • Stigma directed at the user is often obstructive to and unhelpful for progress.
  • Stigma directed at drugs and their effects on individuals and on society at large can be constructive in the right context, if applied sensitively.
  • Attempts by some to remove stigma in its entirety can often be identified as a tactic for unmerited liberalisation of drug strategy, policy and practice.

                                       *        *       *       *

REFERENCES:

  1. Roos, PA. ‘Stigma from Medical Providers Contributed to My Son’s Overdose’. Filtermag.org, 2015
  2. Goffman, E. ‘Stigma- Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity’. Pelican, 1963
  3. NIDA – https://drugabuse.gov/about-nida/noras-blog/2020/04/addressing-stigma-surrounds-addiction)
  4. Flanagan, O. ‘What is it like to be an Addict?’. Oxford University Press, 2025
  5. McKeganey, N. ‘Controversies in Drugs Policy and Practice’. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011
  6. Satel, S. ‘In Praise of Stigma’. John Hopkins University Press, 2007.
  7. https://sallysatelmd.com/html/PraiseStigma2007.pdf – The text in this reference sets out the full statement by NIDA as to the benefits they saw at that time in ‘eliminating stigma’ – but in searching for the actual NIDA paper – entitled  ‘www.drugabuse.gov/about/welcome/aboutdrugabuse/stigma/‘ it was not found possible to access it.
  8. Heyman, GM. ‘Consumption Dependent Changes in Reward Value, a Framework for Understanding Addiction’. Elsevier, 2003

(ENDS)

 

Filed under: Culture,Drug use-various effects,Education,Latest News,Mental Health,Peter's papers (i.e. as written by Peter Stoker),Prevention and Intervention,Social Media,Stigma,Strategy and Policy,UK :

by Denise Dador – ABC7 Newsteam – Los Angeles –  April 4, 2026 

“Rhino tranq” is an emerging, highly-risky street drug. It’s a mix of fentanyl with the animal tranquilizer medetomidine.

“Can be dangerous when people use it, because it can increase the rate of overdose, it can increase the rate of low blood pressure and other cardiovascular complications,” said Dr. Brian Hurley, the medical director of substance abuse prevention and control with the L.A. County Department of Public Health.

He compared it to “tranq,” which is a combination of fentanyl and another veterinary relaxant called xylazine. Hurley said medetomidine, which is found in ‘rhino tranq,’ is far more dangerous.

“Medetomidine is actually more potent than xylazine is, and they both seem to be associated with increased risk of overdose,” Hurley said.

The CDC issued a new warning to health care professionals on Thursday. Medetomidine, which is also known as “mede” or “dex,” is being picked up in seized drugs and wastewater samples. The highest concentration is in the Northeast.

“So it’s not present here at the same degree that is present in other cities on the East Coast, like Philadelphia,” Hurley said. “At the same time, we do think it’s important that the public and the medical providers here in Los Angeles be aware that medetomidine is here.”

He said when people experience a fentanyl overdose with medetomidine, they don’t respond effectively to the opioid reversal drug naloxone.

“Naloxone doesn’t address medetomidine intoxication, nor does it touch medetomidine withdrawal. So, that’s why people will need other supportive care,” Hurley said.

Overall in L.A. County, fentanyl-related deaths have dropped 37% in 2024 compared to 2023. But far too many overdoses are still happening and Hurley said people need to know “rhino tranq” is out there.

“The safest thing is to not use drugs, but if somebody is thinking about using, never use a loan, have naloxone on hand, and consider using test strips to look at what’s in the drug supply,” he said.

He said the county provides free fentanyl testing strips through their community health stations located at various schools, hotels and churches. You can see those locations on their website.

Source: https://abc7.com/post/cdc-issues-warning-rhino-tranq-mix-fentanyl-animal-sedative-medetomidine-resists-overdose-reversal-meds/18835236/
Filed under: Drug use-various effects,Fentanyl,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Synthetics,Treatment and Addiction,USA :

by International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) – 31 March 2026

1. Article I of the Charter of the United Nations provides the Organization’s aims, one of which is “to achieve international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character”. One way to achieve that aim has been to reinforce international cooperation through the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, which was elaborated a few years after the Charter came into force.

The 1961 Convention as amended by the 1972 Protocol and its companion conventions, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971 and the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988, address one of the great challenges of our time, namely, to ensure the availability of substances under international control for the relief of pain and suffering, but doing so in a manner that avoids increasing the likelihood of the illicit trafficking and use of those substances and the social and economic harms that such use can cause.

2. In those conventions, States made it clear that they aimed to address their common challenges through joint action: in the preamble to the 1961 Convention as amended, the Parties asserted that effective measures against the illicit use of narcotic drugs required coordinated and universal action because they understood that that was the most effective way to protect their citizens and provide for their medical and scientific needs.¹

Similarly, Parties to the 1971 Convention gave expression to their belief that taking effective measures to provide psychotropic substances for the needs of their citizens while protecting against trafficking in those substances required coordination and universal action, and that only a widely-respected international convention could achieve those objectives.²

3. Recognizing the growing challenges posed by the world drug problem and the need to broaden the scope of cooperation in international drug control, Member States negotiated and adopted the 1988 Convention. Breaking new ground, the Member States incorporated into the Convention provisions against money-laundering and the diversion of precursor chemicals, and comprehensive articles that encourage and facilitate international cooperation in criminal matters, including to tackle drug trafficking, and assigned new responsibilities to INCB to manage the trade in chemicals used to manufacture plant-based drugs and synthetic drugs.

4. Within the United Nations drug control framework, several actors play a crucial role with respect to the conventions: foremost, the States Parties themselves, along with the Economic and Social Council, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, WHO, INCB and the Secretary-General of the United Nations. The Secretary-General has delegated his role in that respect to UNODC. Over the years, several other actors have emerged as vital stakeholders, assisting States in implementing their legal obligations and political commitments and enabling the functioning of the systems of licit trade and precursor control, supporting efforts related to prevention, treatment and rehabilitation, ensuring availability, and facilitating law enforcement and judicial cooperation. Among those actors are civil society organizations; private sector entities, including manufacturers of substances under international control; the healthcare industry; the world’s postal systems and firms engaged in international commerce; and international and regional organizations. All have been vital in facilitating availability and preventing trafficking.

5. Notwithstanding the existence of this robust framework, its effective functioning has come under considerable strain owing to more recent challenges, not least those posed by the global synthetic drug problem. Synthetic drugs present an increasing challenge because of their high potency, relative ease of manufacture and ability to be concealed, compared with plant-based drugs. The legitimate medical use of many synthetic drugs, combined with the widespread availability of dual-use precursor chemicals, has enabled criminal groups to exploit regulatory gaps and circumvent existing control mechanisms, making it difficult for States and other actors to respond effectively.

6. An additional, ongoing challenge is the unequal access to and availability of affordable opioid analgesics, such as morphine, to meet the legitimate medical needs of populations, particularly for pain management and palliative care. The consumption of morphine and other opioid analgesics remains heavily concentrated in developed countries in North America and Europe, while developing countries in other regions continue to maintain lower levels of consumption. That disparity is not due to an insufficient supply of opiate raw materials but may be a result of estimates of requirements by some countries that do not accurately reflect their medical needs; it may also arise in the context of humanitarian emergencies that impede access to opioid analgesics. Adequate availability relies on the capacity of Governments to provide accurate estimates of their needs and on simplified control measures during emergency situations, as provided for in the conventions.

7. Challenges to international cooperation in drug control have also arisen in the multilateral sphere. In particular, States members of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs have, over the past several years, increasingly found themselves in disagreement over the conventions’ applicability to the non-medical use of cannabis and other matters, including alternative development and the appropriate measures to deal with the negative health and social consequences of drug use (i.e. harm reduction measures).³

In 2024, for the first time in its history, the Commission, at its sixty-seventh session, adopted two resolutions by means of voting,⁴ effectively breaking what has been known as the “Vienna spirit” of cooperation and compromise, whereby resolutions have been adopted by consensus and without a vote. The Vienna spirit has been a key factor in promoting a sense of common and shared responsibility among countries in addressing the world drug problem, but has, without a doubt, been affected by diverging views and practices with regard to implementing obligations under the conventions. The trend away from consensus-based decision-making continued during the Commission’s sixty-eighth session, in 2025, when Commission members requested votes on all draft resolutions.

8. All these challenges underscore the need for adaptive policy responses by Governments and strengthened political will to meet obligations and commitments and address common problems effectively. To assist Member States in strengthening their engagement in international cooperation in drug control and in raising awareness of current challenges and opportunities related to the international drug control system, the present chapter provides an overview of the work of the Board in reinforcing the cooperative efforts of States Parties through its treaty-mandated functions, programmes and initiatives. In particular, the Board’s work in support of licit trade and control systems under the conventions is highlighted. The chapter also contains information on the Board’s extensive cooperation with regional and international partner organizations, particularly in relation to the operational aspects of drug control, as well with civil society and the private sector, which represent two other key groups of stakeholders within the international drug control system. The chapter concludes with a series of recommendations aimed at strengthening international cooperation with a view to responding to the contemporary challenges posed by the world drug problem.

Source: https://idpc.net/publications/2026/03/incb-annual-report-2025

Filed under: Europe,Latest News :

by  Megan Patrick, research professor at the Institute for Social Research and principal investigator of the Monitoring the Future Longitudinal Panel Study, and Yuk Pang, Yvonne Terry-McElrath and Joy Bohyun Jang of U-M’s Institute for Social Research – March 29, 2026

Summary: The choices made between the ages of 18 and 30 may determine brain health 30 years later. A new longitudinal study tracked participants for decades to see how young adult substance use correlates with memory in midlife (ages 50–65).

Researchers found that heavy use of alcohol, cannabis, and cigarettes in your 20s predicts significantly poorer self-reported memory later in life. However, the study reveals that different substances damage the brain through different “routes”—some by causing midlife addiction and others through direct, early-life damage.

Key Facts

  • The “Triple Threat”: The study analyzed binge drinking, near-daily cannabis use, and daily cigarette smoking between ages 18 and 30.
  • Cigarettes = Direct Damage: Daily smoking in young adulthood predicted poorer memory at age 50 regardless of whether the person had quit by age 35. This suggests smoking has a direct, lasting impact on the developing brain.
  • Alcohol & Cannabis = The Addiction Route: Binge drinking and frequent cannabis use in your 20s didn’t directly cause memory loss 30 years later. Instead, they increased the risk of Substance Use Disorders (SUD) in your 30s, which then led to poorer memory in midlife.
  • Early Dementia Sign: Self-reported poor memory is a common early indicator of cognitive decline and dementia, making these early-life behaviors critical targets for prevention.

Young adults who heavily use substances may report significantly poorer memory decades later, a new University of Michigan study suggests.

Researchers tracked how frequently participants reported binge drinking and daily—or near-daily—use of alcohol, cannabis and cigarettes between ages 18 and 30. They then compared those patterns with self-reported poor memory at ages 50 to 65

The study, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, was recently published in the Journal of Aging and Health. 

“Substance use has both acute and long-term effects on health and well-being,” said Megan Patrick, research professor at the Institute for Social Research and principal investigator of the Monitoring the Future Longitudinal Panel Study.

“Poor memory is a common sign of early dementia. We examined whether young adult substance use was associated with poor memory decades later in midlife.”

Identifying behaviors that shape brain health across the lifespan is critical. This is among the first longitudinal studies to link cumulative young adult substance use to self-rated cognition in late midlife, Patrick said.

Young adulthood is a critical period for brain development. The study shows that substance use patterns established during this period may have lasting consequences on memory and cognitive health much later in life. 

“Data like what we have from the MTF Longitudinal Panel study enable us to see these associations across multiple decades of development in the individuals who participate,” Patrick said. “Identifying the risk factors that can lead to dementia is crucial for the prevention and treatment of cognitive decline.”​

Triple threat and addiction

The results suggest different substances may be associated with later memory through different routes—some through substance use disorder symptoms and others more directly.

For example, binge drinking and frequent cannabis use in young adulthood were not directly linked with reporting poor memory in later life. Instead, they increased the risk of developing substance use disorders for people in their 30s, and those disorders were linked to poorer memory later in life. This suggests that treating substance use in midlife could help protect brain health.

Cigarette smoking showed a different pattern. Daily smoking in young adulthood predicted poorer memory in early midlife, regardless of smoking habits at age 35. These findings highlight the need to prevent smoking early in life, Patrick said.

“It’s important for people to understand the long-term connections between their behaviors and later health and well-being,” she said.

“Even if someone thinks their current substance use may not be problematic because they don’t see it as affecting their health right now, there are still potential longer-term consequences to consider. In this case, we are finding some evidence of potential negative impacts of heavy young adult substance use on their cognitive functioning more than 20 years later.”

Prevention and intervention efforts targeting young adults could significantly benefit long-term brain health, Patrick said.

“As we saw, this study demonstrates potential long-term detrimental impacts of young adult heavy substance use on cognitive health later in life. It highlights the importance of early interventions,” she said. “Understanding these risk factors and their trajectory across the lifespan will inform strategies to support cognitive health.”

The study’s authors also included Yuk Pang, Yvonne Terry-McElrath and Joy Bohyun Jang of U-M’s Institute for Social Research.

Key Questions Answered:

Q: I smoked in my 20s but quit at 30. Is my memory still at risk?

A: According to this study, yes. Daily smoking between 18 and 30 was a predictor of poorer memory in midlife, even for those who stopped smoking by age 35. This highlights young adulthood as a “critical window” where the brain is particularly vulnerable to the toxins in cigarettes.

Q: Is cannabis safer for the brain than cigarettes?

A: It’s complicated. While cannabis didn’t show the same “direct” long-term memory damage as cigarettes, it acted as a gateway to Substance Use Disorders in midlife. If heavy use in your 20s leads to a dependency in your 30s or 40s, that dependency is what eventually degrades your memory.

Q: Can I “reverse” the damage if I stop drinking or using drugs in my 30s?

A: The study suggests that for alcohol and cannabis, treating the disorder in midlife is key to protecting your brain. Because the memory loss was linked to the persistence of the addiction into your 30s, getting help early in midlife could potentially halt the cognitive slide.

Source: https://neurosciencenews.com/young-adult-substance-use-memory-30412/

Filed under: Age-related,Brain and Behaviour,Drug use-various effects,Health,Latest News,USA,Youth :

Introductory Note by NDPA: This research concludes that teens are more receptive to presentations by other teens, in comparison to presentations by adults. This is the core of NDPA’s award-winning programme ‘Teenex’ – this is described elsewhere in this website.

 

Medical News – March 28, 2026 

We Have a Substance Use Prevention Problem …

by Stephen Sandelich, MD – Assistant professor of pediatric emergency medicine and addiction medicine at Penn State College of Medicine.

Every week in the pediatric emergency department, I watch the consequences of adolescent substance use arrive through our doors. Overdoses. Acute intoxication. Psychiatric crises triggered by substances that started as experimentation years earlier. And almost every time, somewhere in the history, there is a moment when prevention could have worked — and didn’t.

We have invested heavily in school-based prevention curricula. We have trained teachers and counselors. We have funded awareness campaigns. And yet, adolescents continue to initiate substance use at younger ages, with fewer of them accessing treatment when problems emerge.

What if the most effective prevention tool isn’t a curriculum at all?

What We Found

A study I co-authored, published in Addiction Science & Clinical Practice, evaluated a school-based program called “Ignite & Engage,” delivered by Rise Together, a peer-led recovery community organization based in the Midwest. Between 2014 and 2020, we surveyed over 10,000 middle and high school students across 240 schools who attended assemblies led by individuals in addiction recovery.

The results were striking. More than half of students with a history of substance use reported feeling less likely to use drugs or alcohol after attending a single assembly. Among middle schoolers that number reached 60%. The mean age of substance use initiation in our sample was 13.9 years, with nearly 30% initiating before age 14. Notably, 76% of students identified the presenters’ personal recovery stories as the most valuable element. Qualitative responses described reduced stigma, greater willingness to seek help, and increased motivation to support peers.

These are the upstream outcomes we are trying to achieve, and a single assembly delivered by people with lived experience moved the needle in ways that months of curriculum often do not.

Why Does This Work When Other Programs Don’t?

Adolescents are remarkably perceptive. They know when they are being lectured at. They know when a prevention message is scripted, formulaic, or disconnected from their reality. Traditional didactic models, even well-funded evidence-based curricula, frequently fail to engage adolescents at the level needed to influence behavior.

Peer-led storytelling works differently. When someone who has lived through addiction stands in front of a gymnasium full of teenagers and speaks honestly about what it cost them, and how they found their way out, something shifts. The abstract becomes concrete. Statistics become human. And the stigma that prevents so many young people from asking for help begins to crack.

Our qualitative findings captured this directly. Students wrote about feeling less alone. About opening up for the first time. About reconsidering choices they had already started making. One student wrote that the day the program visited their school was the day they decided to pursue recovery.

What Should Clinicians Do With This?

As pediatricians and emergency medicine physicians, we are often the last line of defense, seeing patients after prevention has already failed. But our advocacy carries weight well beyond the exam room.

There are concrete steps clinicians can take. Ask your patients what prevention programming their schools offer. Advocate within your health systems and school districts for recovery community organizations to be recognized as legitimate prevention partners — not just in treatment and recovery support, but upstream. Push back in policy conversations against the assumption that a once-yearly health class lecture constitutes adequate prevention.

Recovery community organizations exist in most communities and are largely untapped as prevention resources. They are low-cost, community-embedded, and, as our data suggest, effective at reaching adolescents in ways that traditional models frequently cannot.

An Important Caveat

Our study has real limitations. It was cross-sectional and relied on self-report. We lacked a control group. The sample was predominantly white and Midwestern, limiting generalizability. And measuring intent to avoid substances is not the same as measuring actual behavior change. Rigorous prospective evaluation of peer-led prevention programs is needed before we can draw firm conclusions about long-term impact.

But the signal is strong enough, and the need urgent enough, that waiting for perfect evidence while adolescents continue to initiate substance use at younger ages is not a defensible position.

The Bottom Line

The students in our study told us something worth listening to. They did not need more facts about why drugs are dangerous. They needed connection. They needed authenticity. They needed proof that recovery is real and possible.

Recovery community organizations can provide all three. It is time for clinicians to help make the case for integrating them into the prevention landscape, before more patients arrive in our emergency departments having never been reached at all.

Source: https://www.medpagetoday.com/emergencymedicine/emergencymedicine/120523

Filed under: Age-related,Culture,Education,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,USA,Youth :
Medscape Logo
Edited by Mamta Pawara – March 27, 2026

TOPLINE:

Cannabis use was associated with smaller volumes in the amygdala, and tobacco smoking was linked to smaller volumes in the amygdala, insula, and pallidum and reduced total grey matter volume (TGMV). A systematic review and meta-analysis of 103 studies found consistent evidence across cross-sectional, longitudinal, and Mendelian randomisation (MR) studies for tobacco-related TGMV loss.

METHODOLOGY:

  • Researchers conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of 103 independent studies examining associations between cannabis use, tobacco use, co-use, and brain volume.
  • The meta-analysis included a total of 77 studies and 72,798 participants: 44 studies (18,247 participants) examined cannabis use cross-sectionally, 30 studies (51,194 participants) examined tobacco use cross-sectionally, and three studies (3357 participants) examined tobacco use longitudinally.
  • The analysis included cross-sectional, longitudinal, and MR study designs to triangulate evidence across different methodological approaches with varying sources of bias.
  • Outcome measures focused on the brain volume of global, cortical, and subcortical regions assessed using T1-weighted structural MRI, with 33 brain regions of interest analysed.
  • The researchers extracted both adjusted and unadjusted estimates and utilised random-effects meta-analyses stratified by exposure and study design.

TAKEAWAY:

  • The meta-analysis of adjusted cross-sectional estimates showed that people who used cannabis had smaller volumes in the amygdala than control individuals, with a small effect size (17 studies; P = .016).
  • People who smoked tobacco had smaller volumes in the amygdala (five studies; P = .025), insula (five studies; P = .011), and pallidum (five studies; P ≤ .0001) and smaller TGMV (seven studies; P = .020) than control individuals; however, there was weak evidence for smaller volumes in the hippocampus in this group (10 studies; P = .049).
  • Longitudinal analysis indicated a greater decrease in TGMV among people who smoked tobacco than among control individuals (five studies; P = .037).
  • MR studies provided weak evidence that smoking initiation might decrease amygdala volumes (P = .046) and TGMV (P = .122 after adjusting) while demonstrating strong evidence that smoking more cigarettes per day might significantly decrease hippocampal volumes (P = 1.8E-06).

IN PRACTICE:

“We found cross-sectional evidence that people who use cannabis had smaller volumes in the amygdala. There were smaller volumes in the amygdala, insula and pallidum associated with tobacco use. There was consistent evidence for reductions in TGMV associated with smoking across cross-sectional, longitudinal and MR studies,” the authors wrote.

“This review highlights significant gaps in the literature, including a lack of studies using longitudinal and causal inference designs, as well as a lack of research on cannabis and tobacco co-use,” they added.

SOURCE:

This study was led by Katherine Sawyer, University of Bath, Bath, England. It was published online on March 19, 2026, in Addiction.

LIMITATIONS:

Most included studies were cross-sectional, which prevented definitive causal inferences about effects of cannabis and tobacco use on brain structure. Adjusted estimates varied significantly between individual studies; some adjusted only for intracranial volume, which introduced heterogeneity into the analysis. Using cortical volume as the primary structural measure may have been less sensitive to differences driven by cortical thickness or surface area. Not all relevant regions could be assessed because there were insufficient independent studies for meta-analysis in some regions in which previous reviews had found reductions.

DISCLOSURES:

Several authors reported receiving funding, grants, investigator grants, senior research fellowships, PhD studentships, and postdoctoral fellowship awards from several organisations including but not limited to the Medical Research Council, UK Research and Innovation, the UK government’s Horizon Europe, Wellcome, the European Research Council, Cancer Research UK, and Pfizer. One author declared having previous employment at a consultancy that provided support for pharma companies.

Sources:
  • Summary:  https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/cannabis-and-tobacco-use-tied-reduced-brain-volumes-2026a100094a?ecd=a2a&form=fpf

 

  • Original Article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.70361
Filed under: Brain and Behaviour,Cannabis/Marijuana,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Tobacco, smoking,UK :
 
AUTHOR(S): Jake Shepherd, Jamie Gollings, Barney Dowling  – 25 March 2026

Scotland’s drug crisis carries a profound toll, with hundreds of lives lost each year. As well as these human impacts, the crisis imposes considerable financial costs that are likely to shape future decision-making. This report presents new economic analysis of those costs, examining their consequences across the public sector and the wider Scottish economy.

Drawing on qualitative insights from policy experts, service leaders, and clinicians, as well as people who use drugs, the research explores the measures the new Scottish Government can take to alleviate the crisis. It ultimately advocates for a full-spectrum approach, spanning harm reduction and recovery-focused interventions.

KEY FINDINGS

  • Scotland’s drug death rate is exceptionally high. The crisis is closely linked to deprivation and structural inequalities, with deindustrialisation, social displacement, and hardship shaping the conditions in which harmful drug environments can develop. It should not be treated as an individual failing.
  • In recent years, the crisis has taken on new dimensions, such as the rise of polydrug deaths and the emergence of powerful synthetic opioids.
  • People with lived and living experience of drug use in Glasgow and Edinburgh described what is in their view an increasingly pervasive drugs market, alongside concerns that support services are difficult to access.
  • New economic modelling estimates that drug harm has a direct cost to the state of up to £1 billion every year in Scotland, including £220 million in healthcare and drug services costs and £320 million on crime and justice.
  • Total social and economic costs are estimated to be as much as £5.7 billion annually. As well as public sector impacts, this includes £1.2 billion in lost output from employment and £3.5 billion in social costs from deaths, lost quality of life, and victim costs.
  • There is extensive evidence  that relatively low-cost interventions can reduce harm and prevent deaths. Needle and syringe programmes and naloxone – an opioid overdose antidote – are highly cost-effective and may even be cost-saving. Interventional evidence also supports drug checking services and safer drug consumption facilities.

RECOMMENDATIONS

  • Policymakers should take a primarily public health-led approach to drug harm, prioritising prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and support –  a more effective approach than one based on punishment and criminalisation.
  • The most immediate priority should be to prevent deaths, through sustaining naloxone and needle and syringe exchange programmes, expanding drug checking services, and rolling out safer drugs consumption facilities.
  • These approaches should also work alongside treatment and recovery services to provide a full spectrum of support, including widening Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT)-style treatments, increasing detox capacity, and closing gaps in residential rehabilitation.
  • In terms of longer-term measures, action should include sustained investment from the Scottish Government to back up its new Alcohol and Drugs Plan, including expanding preventative support. The UK Government should carry out a comprehensive review of drugs policy, including the possibility of legislative reform.

Source: https://www.smf.co.uk/publications/scottish-drugs-crisis/

Filed under: Drug use-various effects,Economic,Latest News,UK :
Contact: Fernanda Pires  –  March 23, 2026

Young adults who heavily use substances may report significantly poorer memory decades later, a new University of Michigan study suggests.

Researchers tracked how frequently participants reported binge drinking and daily—or near-daily—use of alcohol, cannabis and cigarettes between ages 18 and 30. They then compared those patterns with self-reported poor memory at ages 50 to 65.

The study, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, was recently published in the Journal of Aging and Health.

“Substance use has both acute and long-term effects on health and well-being,” said Megan Patrick, research professor at the Institute for Social Research and principal investigator of the Monitoring the Future Longitudinal Panel Study. “Poor memory is a common sign of early dementia. We examined whether young adult substance use was associated with poor memory decades later in midlife.”

Identifying behaviors that shape brain health across the lifespan is critical. This is among the first longitudinal studies to link cumulative young adult substance use to self-rated cognition in late midlife, Patrick said.

Young adulthood is a critical period for brain development. The study shows that substance use patterns established during this period may have lasting consequences on memory and cognitive health much later in life.

“Data like what we have from the MTF Longitudinal Panel study enable us to see these associations across multiple decades of development in the individuals who participate,” Patrick said. “Identifying the risk factors that can lead to dementia is crucial for the prevention and treatment of cognitive decline.”

Triple threat and addiction

The results suggest different substances may be associated with later memory through different routes—some through substance use disorder symptoms and others more directly.

For example, binge drinking and frequent cannabis use in young adulthood were not directly linked with reporting poor memory in later life. Instead, they increased the risk of developing substance use disorders for people in their 30s, and those disorders were linked to poorer memory later in life. This suggests that treating substance use in midlife could help protect brain health.

Cigarette smoking showed a different pattern. Daily smoking in young adulthood predicted poorer memory in early midlife, regardless of smoking habits at age 35. These findings highlight the need to prevent smoking early in life, Patrick said.

“It’s important for people to understand the long-term connections between their behaviors and later health and well-being,” she said. “Even if someone thinks their current substance use may not be problematic because they don’t see it as affecting their health right now, there are still potential longer-term consequences to consider. In this case, we are finding some evidence of potential negative impacts of heavy young adult substance use on their cognitive functioning more than 20 years later.”

Prevention and intervention efforts targeting young adults could significantly benefit long-term brain health, Patrick said.

“As we saw, this study demonstrates potential long-term detrimental impacts of young adult heavy substance use on cognitive health later in life. It highlights the importance of early interventions,” she said. “Understanding these risk factors and their trajectory across the lifespan will inform strategies to support cognitive health.”

The study’s authors also included Yuk Pang, Yvonne Terry-McElrath and Joy Bohyun Jang of U-M’s Institute for Social Research.

Source: https://news.umich.edu/the-brain-remembers-the-hidden-cost-of-young-adult-substance-use/

Filed under: Addiction,Brain and Behaviour,Latest News,USA :
by Christina Myer exec editor of The Parkersburg News and Sentinel – Mar 14, 2026

According to the Drug Policy Alliance, overdose deaths are decreasing most in places where harm reduction practices are at work.

Dasgupta is a scientist studying drug overdose deaths at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Use-prevention efforts such as honest school-based awareness programs, prescription drug monitoring programs, improved access to affordable mental healthcare, even data collection efforts that help guide the conversation — it all helps.

For that matter, access to affordable healthcare in general — particularly in a state that relies so much on physical laborers who face the risk of injury and chronic physical pain daily — is essential. Even better if alternative means of pain management are encouraged rather than squashed.

But perhaps one of the least considered when there is so much lower-hanging fruit for politicians are the “deaths of despair,” and the role hopelessness and dismal economic prospects have played in this plague. Deep generational poverty, socio-cultural assumptions about both education/job training AND substance use, and the perpetual failure to bring any momentum to the expansion and diversification of our economy have been crippling.

As the abstract for one Marshall University study on “The opioid epidemic: Effects on recidivism in West Virginia,” put it, “the opioid epidemic was just a by-product of a much larger issue found in West Virginia.”

Now, tens of millions of dollars have been distributed across the state in the early stages of the West Virginia First Foundation’s mission of “Empowering West Virginians to prevent substance use disorder, support recovery, and save lives.”

According to Chairman Greg Duckworth, “These investments are not just funding grants, they are strengthening an ecosystem. We are supporting foster families, peer recovery networks, workforce pipelines, diversion strategies, wraparound youth services, and the long-term capacity needed to change outcomes for generations.”

Here’s hoping the goal is that one day the foundation will run out of money after having completed its mission and happily close up shop.

But until that day, no one can let what looks like success over the course of one year lull them into letting off the gas. We’re not even out of the driveway.

Source: https://www.newsandsentinel.com/opinion/local-columns/2026/03/editors-notes-harm-reduction-effort-working/

Filed under: Drug use-various effects,Harm Reduction,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Strategy and Policy,Treatment and Addiction,USA :
by George Karandinos, MD, PhD1,2; Travis P. Baggett, MD, MPH1,2,3; Daniel Ciccarone, MD, MPH4 – March 16, 2026
The US is experiencing a historically unprecedented large-scale shift from opioid injecting to smoking. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that more fatal drug overdoses now involve smoking than any other route of administration. Previously thought to be rare in the US, opioid smoking appears to be growing in nearly every US state. Its geographic spread, though, has been heterogeneous, initially increasing and reaching its highest prevalence in the Western US. Recent qualitative studies have explored the motivation for this trend. These studies report that many individuals who smoke opioids perceive that smoking instead of injecting reduces their risk of overdose, infections, and wounds, minimizes the frustration of repeated injection, and avoids injection-related stigma.
Source: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2846283
Filed under: Culture,Latest News,Opioids,USA,Vaping :

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

Vienna (Austria), 13 March 2026 — The 69th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) wrapped up today in Vienna after five days of deliberations on emerging drug trends, treaty implementation, governance issues and international cooperation. The session brought together 2078 participants, including representatives from 134 Member States, 20 intergovernmental organizations, nine United Nations entities and 198 non-governmental organizations, reflecting broad and high-level engagement, highlighting the Commission’s central role as the United Nations’ global policymaking platform on drug-related matters.

In his closing remarks, the Chair of the 69th session, H.E. Ambassador Andranik Hovhannisyan of Armenia, thanked Member States for their constructive engagement and reaffirmed the importance of multilateral cooperation in responding to complex and interconnected drug challenges.

The UNODC Acting Executive Director John Brandolino likewise highlighted the importance of dialogue and partnership, stressing that: “Preserving that spirit of openness, cooperation and compromise will be essential if we are to continue making progress.” He emphasized that, amid global uncertainty, the Commission remains a valuable and increasingly rare forum where diverse perspectives come together to advance collective responses to the world drug problem.

CND expert panel 

Under agenda item 5(e), the Commission advanced the establishment of the Expert Panel mandated by resolution 68/6, to prepare actionable recommendations to strengthen the implementation of international drug control treaties before the 2029 review. During its 69th session, the Commission filled the remaining seats allocated to the Eastern European Group and the Western European and Other States Group and appointed Natalie Yu- Lin Morris-Sharma from Singapore as Co-Chair by acclamation, completing the composition of the nineteen-member multidisciplinary panel of independent experts.

Substances placed under international control 

In carrying out its treaty-mandated functions, the Commission decided to place three substances under international control following recommendations from the World Health Organization. Two of the substances, both highly potent synthetic opioids (N-pyrrolidino isotonitazene and N-desethyl etonitazene), are linked to serious overdose risks, while MDMB-FUBINACA, a synthetic cannabinoid, is associated with severe adverse health effects.

Five resolutions adopted

The Commission adopted five resolutions aimed at strengthening international cooperation and promoting balanced, evidence-based approaches to drug policy.

The Commission adopted a resolution to reinforce the implementation of Article 13 of the 1988 Convention, which calls upon Member States to enhance regulatory and criminal justice efforts and to strengthen cooperation with the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) and relevant partners in preventing  the diversion of equipment and related materials used for illicit drug production and manufacture, while ensuring their access and availability for medical and scientific purposes.

To combat the criminal exploitation of licit supply chains, the Commission adopted a resolution calling for stronger supply chain integrity measures — from “know your customer” practices to enhanced customs cooperation and real-time information sharing — to prevent traffickers from misusing licit supply chains for synthetic drug production and trafficking.

The Commission also adopted, through a resolution, an Appendix to complement the UN Guiding Principles on Alternative Development, promoting climate-sensitive, gender-responsive and community-driven strategies for sustainable transition away from illicit drug economies.

To stay ahead of evolving synthetic drug threats, the Commission adopted a resolution to improve early warning mechanisms, emphasizing the importance of data collection, enhanced monitoring, risk assessment and real-time information sharing in enabling faster public health and law enforcement responses to new psychoactive substances and precursors, including pre-precursors and designer precursors.

Finally, the Commission adopted a resolution that promotes integrated and coherent systems of scientific evidence-based drug-related public health responses — from prevention and treatment to recovery and improved access to and availability of controlled medicines — grounded in human rights, gender-responsiveness and coordinated cross-sector action.

Together, these outcomes reflect the Commission’s ongoing dedication to protecting health, developing a coordinated response to the synthetic drugs threat, and promoting viable licit economic alternatives to the illicit cultivation of drug crops and other drug-related activities.

Further information

The CND is the policymaking body of the United Nations, with primary responsibility for drug control and other drug-related matters. It is responsible for monitoring the world drug situation, developing evidence-based drug control strategies and recommending measures to address the world drug problem. 

Source: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/frontpage/2026/March/cnd-closing.html

Filed under: All countries,Latest News,Strategy and Policy :

 

Engaging in meditation, prayer, or other spiritual practices was linked to a decreased risk for alcohol and drug misuse, a new meta-analysis showed.

Harmful use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, or illicit drugs was 13% lower in individuals who engaged in spiritual practices, and 18% lower among those who regularly attended religious services.

The results suggest that for some patients, integrating spirituality into medical care may hold potential for substance use prevention and recovery efforts, researchers said.

“Our findings indicate that spirituality may be protective against substance misuse, one of the biggest public health challenges of our time,” lead author Howard K. Koh, MD, MPH, and Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, said in a news release.

“For many individuals and families, using spirituality as a resource — whether that be attending religious services, meditating, praying, or seeking other forms of spiritual comfort — may be an avenue to enhance their health.

The study was published online on February 18 in JAMA Psychiatry.

As reported by Medscape Medical News, previous research suggests that integrating spirituality into medicine is linked to improved mental and physiologic health and less substance use. But evidence on long-term effects, particularly with alcohol and drug use, was lacking.

To fill that gap, investigators conducted a meta-analysis of 55 longitudinal cohort studies involving 540,712 children, adolescents, and adults. These studies, published between 2000 and 2022, explored the associations between spirituality and dangerous alcohol or drug use. Most of the studies focused on prevention, and one randomized clinical trial was also included in the meta-analysis.

Spiritual practices, religious or not, were associated with a 13% lower risk for hazardous alcohol or drug use (relative risk [RR], 0.87; 95% CI, 0.84-0.91). This risk reduction was consistent across all substance types.

Individuals who attended religious service more than once a week were 18% less likely to engage in substance misuse (RR, 0.82; P < .001).

“The consistency of the results across all the studies was striking, with all but a few — including over a dozen studies conducted outside of the US — showing a protective, not detrimental, effect,” senior author Tyler J. VanderWeele, PhD, John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in a statement.

Protective benefits were found in both the prevention of substance misuse and in outcomes related to substance use disorder recovery. 

“Participation in spiritual or religious communities may affect outcomes through mechanisms including social support, strong abstinence or nonintoxication or moderation social norms, meaning and purpose, and moral beliefs,” researchers wrote. 

“Emerging evidence from neuroscience suggests that spiritual practices can influence brain regions associated with stress regulation, reward processing, and social connection,” they continued.

Limitations of the study were potential biases in study design and selection, as well as variability in how spirituality was identified across studies.

“Clinicians and communities can consider identifying and aligning spirituality themes to broaden future efforts in drug use prevention and recovery,” the investigators wrote, suggesting that clinicians ask patients whether spirituality is important to them for health. They also noted that efforts should respect patient autonomy and evidence-based practices

Source: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/spirituality-linked-lower-risk-substance-misuse-2026a10007ri

 

Filed under: Culture,Latest News,USA :

from WRD News Team – November 5, 2025

A Response to Media Coverage of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT)’s  Drug Decriminalisation Anniversary

On 27 October 2025, the ABC published an article marking two years since ACT drug decriminalisation made the Australian Capital Territory the first Australian jurisdiction to remove criminal penalties for small amounts of illicit drugs. The piece featured advocates celebrating “meaningful harm reduction” and government officials claiming community support for treating drug use as a health issue. Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith stated the government was hearing from “the vast majority of the community” that they wanted drug use treated as a health issue, not a criminal one. Pill Testing Australia’s David Caldicott dismissed concerning statistics as “misconstruing correlation and causation.”

What the article downplayed, burying critical opposition voices and alarming data in the latter portions, was the stark reality: ACT drug decriminalisation is failing by nearly every measurable metric.

  1. The ACT Reality: Two Years of Deterioration

Since ACT drug decriminalisation was implemented in October 2023, the Australian Capital Territory has recorded:

  • Cocaine use up approximately 70%
  • Heroin use up 30%
  • Methamphetamine use up 40%
  • 16 suspected overdose deaths in 2025 alone
  • More than 1,100 drug-related emergency presentations in 2024-25
  • Drug-driving charges up more than 20%

Australian Federal Police Association president Alex Caruana stated bluntly: “The statistics are indicating that the ACT is now nation-leading when it comes to non-fatal overdoses. And our members have to be out there dealing with those non-fatal overdoses all the time… I think decriminalisation on the whole is something that hasn’t worked, and the data is indicating that very, very, very plainly it hasn’t worked.”

Yet media coverage continues to present ACT drug decriminalisation as a success story, echoing narratives built on selective statistics and misrepresented outcomes from Portugal’s controversial policy shift more than two decades ago.

  1. The Portugal Fallacy: Two Decades of Misrepresented Data

The foundation of the pro-decriminalisation movement, and the justification for ACT drug decriminalisation, rests heavily on a 2009 report commissioned by the libertarian Cato Institute and funded by the Marijuana Policy Project. This report, written by lawyer Glenn Greenwald after just three weeks in Portugal, has been cited thousands of times as definitive proof that decriminalisation works. Yet multiple independent analyses, including evaluations by the Obama White House Drug Control Policy office and Portuguese medical professionals, have exposed fundamental flaws in its methodology and conclusions.

Drug Use: The Inconvenient Truth

Contrary to claims of declining drug use, Portugal has experienced alarming increases across nearly every category since decriminalisation.

Overall Drug Consumption:

  • Between 2001 and 2007, overall drug consumption increased by 4.2% in absolute terms
  • Lifetime drug experimentation climbed from 7.8% to 12%
  • By 2017, drug use amongst those aged 15-64 was 59% higher than in 2001, a trend that would be considered catastrophic in any objective policy evaluation

Specific Substances (2001-2007):

  • Cannabis use amongst 15-34 year-olds jumped from 12.4% to 17%
  • Cocaine use more than doubled from 1.3% to 2.8%
  • Ecstasy use nearly doubled from 1.4% to 2.6%
  • Heroin use increased from 0.7% to 1.1%

Youth Drug Use: A Growing Crisis Amongst secondary school students, the age group society should most protect, drug use in 2011 was 36% higher than in 2001 and 76% higher than in 2006. These are not the markers of policy success.

The National Survey on the Use of Psychoactive Substances in the General Population, Portugal 2016/17, reported: “We have seen a rise in the prevalence of alcohol and tobacco consumption and of every illicit psychoactive substance between 2012-2016/17.”

The Death Toll: Rising Despite Claims Otherwise

Perhaps the most misleading aspect of the decriminalisation narrative concerns drug-related deaths. While the Cato report celebrated declining death rates, the complete picture tells a different story.

Drug-induced deaths did decrease initially from 369 in 1999 to 152 in 2003. However:

  • By 2007, deaths had climbed to 314, significantly higher than the 280 deaths recorded when decriminalisation began in 2001
  • By 2008, the figure reached 338 deaths
  • Using data from Portugal’s National Institute of Forensic Medicine, which employs more comprehensive testing methods, the toll represents roughly one death per day

Critically, the Obama White House analysis noted that roughly half of the decrease in heroin-related deaths occurred before decriminalisation was implemented, suggesting other factors were at play that had nothing to do with the policy change.

HIV/AIDS Crisis Amongst Drug Users

Portugal now holds the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of HIV/AIDS amongst injecting drug users in the European Union:

  • 85 new cases per million citizens in 2005, eight times the EU average
  • The number of new HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C cases amongst Portuguese drug users is eight times the average found in other EU member states
  • Portugal remains the only EU country recording a recent increase in injecting drug-related AIDS cases
  • In 2005, Portugal recorded 703 newly diagnosed infections, followed at a distance by Estonia with 191 and Latvia with 108, a shameful 268% aggravation from the next worst case

This stands in stark contrast to the narrative of improved public health outcomes.

The Cocaine Crisis and Drug Trafficking

While advocates claim decriminalisation reduces drug trafficking, the evidence shows the opposite:

  • Cocaine seizures in Portugal increased sevenfold between 2001 and 2006
  • The country was rated the sixth highest globally for cocaine confiscations
  • In 2006, Portugal was responsible for 35% of all cocaine seizures in Europe
  • Drug-related homicides increased by 40% following decriminalisation, making Portugal the only European country with a significant increase in drug-related murders between 2001 and 2006

Public Perception: Citizens Report Growing Problems

Portuguese citizens themselves report growing concerns. A 2007 survey by the Centre for Studies and Opinion Polls at Portuguese Catholic University found:

  • 83.7% believed drug use had increased in the previous four years
  • 66.8% reported drugs were easily accessible in their neighbourhoods
  • 77.3% stated that drug-related crime had risen

The Drug Tourism Reality

The Cato report claimed drug tourism fears were unfounded, yet evidence from travellers and locals tells a different story. One 2015 visitor recounted: “Don’t go to Lisbon. I have just returned from a weekend in Lisbon. Consistent harassment from people selling drugs. I was approached 30-40 times over the weekend. Sitting outside drinking a coffee at lunchtime, must have been approached 5-6 times in one hour.”

Another account stated: “In the most touristy area of Lisbon, around the Praça do Comércio, the police tolerate drug dealers in Lisbon. That’s right. We walked past a man on the street who offered us marijuana whilst there was a police man standing only two metres from us. Nothing happened.”

The Medicinalisation Trap: Dependency Dressed as Treatment

A central pillar of Portugal’s approach has been the massive expansion of opioid substitution programmes, primarily methadone maintenance. By 2008, approximately 70% of Portuguese heroin users were enrolled in substitution programmes, representing roughly half of all problem opioid users in Europe.

While advocates present this as evidence of treatment success, critics raise profound questions about whether maintaining drug dependency through government-supplied opiates constitutes genuine treatment or merely a form of chemical social control. The European Monitoring Centre acknowledges that “questions are being asked about the long-term outcomes of those in care,” as many patients remain on methadone indefinitely with no path to abstinence.

One EMCDDA official noted: “Now that the epidemic is under control for the most part, people start asking questions. The question now is what is going to happen next? There is a part of the population who do not have the possibility of leaving the treatment.”

A New Yorker article captured the troubling reality of a Portuguese methadone patient: “I guess I should try to overcome my addiction. I know I should. But I’m not sure I can, and it isn’t really necessary. I am lucky to live in a society that has accepted the fact that drugs and addiction are part of life.”

  1. Oregon’s Reversal: When Reality Overtakes Ideology

Perhaps the most telling development occurred in 2024 when Oregon, which had implemented the most comprehensive drug decriminalisation measure in United States history in 2020, reversed course after devastating outcomes. State lawmakers repealed the decriminalisation laws, citing an overwhelmed health system and sharply rising drug-related crime.

Oregon’s experience demonstrated that decriminalisation, even when coupled with expanded treatment funding, cannot address the fundamental problems of drug addiction and trafficking. The swift reversal should serve as a warning to jurisdictions like the ACT that are only beginning to experience the full consequences of decriminalisation policies.

Conclusion: Confronting the Data

The media narrative around ACT drug decriminalisation relies on selective statistics, misleading timeframes, and anecdotal testimony that obscures measurable outcomes. When advocates dismiss dramatic increases in drug use, overdoses, and drug-related crime as “misconstruing correlation and causation,” they are asking us to ignore the evidence before our eyes.

The ACT’s experience after just two years mirrors Portugal’s longer trajectory: increased drug use across all categories, rising overdoses, growing public safety concerns, and a health system struggling to cope with the consequences. The Australian Federal Police Association’s assessment is blunt but accurate: “The data is indicating that very, very, very plainly it hasn’t worked.”

As jurisdictions worldwide reconsider decriminalisation policies, from Oregon’s outright reversal to growing concerns in Portugal itself, the question surrounding ACT drug decriminalisation is no longer whether it works. The data has answered that clearly. The question is whether policymakers and media will continue to prioritize ideology over evidence, and rhetoric over reality.

Source: Herschel Baker – Director Queensland, Drug Free Australia – https://drugfree.org.au/ 

Filed under: Australia,Culture,Latest News,Strategy and Policy :

by Elaine Williams, Business editor – March 8, 2026

Cannabis sales have surged in Washington since legalization in 2012, but educators, police and health experts say questions remain about effects on young users

Paige Valpey’s cannabis use began with what she perceived as a low-risk way to escape the angst of being a 13-year-old girl and bonding with friends.

She first smoked cannabis with friends after school, stealing the drug from a stash belonging to adults who weren’t home, said Valpey, who is now 28, nine months sober, a licensed esthetician, owner of a thriving business and a wife.

In hindsight, Valpey believes her habit, among other things, hurt her grades, curtailed her participation in school activities, triggered fatigue and caused anxiety.

Valpey started using cannabis in the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley before recreational sales became legal in Washington in 2012. But she said she found more access to the drug once cannabis stores opened in Clarkston even though she never purchased it from one of the state-licensed retailers when she was underage.

Information Washington state agencies have collected and research they have completed since recreational sales of cannabis became legal indicate the drug can be related to troubling issues for adolescents and teens who use it, like Valpey did.

Impaired learning for as long as 28 days after the last hit for weekly users and suicidal ideation for daily users are among the health conditions adolescents could encounter, according to the website of the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board.

A decrease in perceptual reasoning after one or two uses, along with an increase in the likelihood for generalized anxiety are noted in one state study.

Despite the potential risks, monitoring health impacts of cannabis on adolescents has gaps. Meanwhile, legal sales of the drug skyrocket and some worry the product is getting into the hands of teens through indirect channels.

The parameters of legal cannabis

Total annual sales in Asotin County’s three retail cannabis stores were four times larger in 2024 compared to the first full year of legal sales in that jurisdiction more than a decade ago, after adjusting for inflation. Overall state sales rose by 87%. (See accompanying graphic.)

Lewiston and Clarkston police believe teenagers are using some of that cannabis, even though retailers comply with a ban on sales to anyone under the age of 21 and a Washington state survey shows a decline in youth use.

In contrast, Matt Plemmons, an owner of Greenfield Cannabis in Clarkston, thinks legalization has not made cannabis more accessible to adolescents and teens.

“Legalization has made it safer,” he said. “We developed a highly, strictly regulated market that checks everybody’s IDs, every time, no matter what. Illicit dealers did not check. They didn’t care if you were not 21 years old.”

If teenagers are hanging around his business, employees call law enforcement, Plemmons said.

Youth cannabis prevention should be a collaboration of “everybody, parents, schools, health care providers and state regulators,” Plemmons said. “The industry side is strict compliance (with all state laws).”

Still, the safeguards Plemmons described don’t stop young people from paying adults to buy cannabis from the state stores or stealing cannabis from adult relatives and friends, said Clarkston police officers, educators and students.

A sign posted outside Canna4Life Cannabis Dispensary in Clarkston warns that the penalties for adults purchasing cannabis for minors are as much as 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. But prosecutions in Asotin County for the felony are infrequent, likely between six to 12 cases since 2000, said Asotin County Prosecutor Curt Liedkie.

Obtaining evidence is difficult. Kids typically don’t come forward. Absent officers witnessing transactions or finding text messages, the cases are challenging to prosecute, he said.

“We take it very seriously,” Liedkie said.

That reality is widely known in the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley, where Asotin County’s three stores are within a 10-minute walk of CHS, said Caden Massey, coordinator of Clarkston EPIC (Empowering People Inspiring Change), a Washington state-funded program.

Massey’s group made the signs posted at Canna4Life, one of its many efforts to help teens struggling with mental health and academic issues.

“I know people who have purchased weed for younger people, and their perception is ‘Nothing is going to happen. I’m of legal age,’ “ Massey said.

All of the stores are at least 1,000 feet away from schools, libraries, parks, daycares and arcades, in compliance with state rules, and even closer to the police department, making it easy for officers to monitor the retailers, Plemmons said.

The physical separation of the stores from places where teens gather is just part of the issue.

Teenagers who are curious, but who haven’t used the drug, window shop the retailers online, browsing hundreds of products, and then tell whoever is buying for them exactly what they want, said one Clarkston High School student.

Once again, Plemmons has a different take. Customers can only order products on his website, he notes. All purchases happen at the store where everyone is carded.

Parents and teachers can use the website as a resource to learn about cannabis to help them refine prevention strategies, he said.

“I’ve had teachers come (to Greenfield) and given them a full breakdown of what everything looks like,” Plemmons said.

In some families, teenagers obtain cannabis in their homes, said John Morbeck, a Clarkston police officer who was in charge of the community’s youth drug prevention program when state-licensed cannabis stores debuted in Asotin County.

Before that, everyone kept it out of sight, he said.

“(Parents) didn’t want their kids to go to school and say, ‘Hey, Mom and Dad are smoking pot.’ So it wasn’t available to (kids),” Morbeck said. “As soon as the legal part changed, that’s when stuff at the schools started increasing.”

The Washington CannaBusiness Association asserts underage access to cannabis is happening through a different route.

There’s a thriving illicit market online where kids can purchase untested, unregulated and untaxed cannabis products like hemp-derived THC, according to an email from the association.

Valpey’s experience mirrors what law enforcement shared.

She said she had more access to cannabis when the state-licensed stores opened even though she hadn’t turned 21 years old.

“If you had an older sibling or friend, you could convince them to go in and get it for you,” Valpey said.

Data is lacking

Just as it’s difficult to know how widespread access to cannabis from state-licensed stores is to teenagers and others who are underage through indirect channels, it’s also unclear the magnitude of any health issues caused by unauthorized availability of the drug.

Washington does not have a dedicated surveillance system that tracks the health impacts of youth cannabis in a systematic way, said Ryan McLaughlin, an associate professor at Washington State University who is co-director of the school’s Cannabis Research Center, in an email.

The lack of coordinated monitoring is widely acknowledged, McLaughlin said, and is a reason researchers at WSU and across the state emphasize the need for stronger public health tracking, particularly as the potency and variety of products have risen.

Plemmons agrees.

“Public policy should be informed by as much reliable data as possible,” Plemmons said. “That will help regulators refine our strategies to prevent use among minors.”

One effective strategy, Plemmons said, is distributing free lock boxes to customers at cannabis retailers, something EPIC sponsors.

Source: https://www.lmtribune.com/local-news/youth-and-cannabis-whats-the-risk-21338411/

Filed under: Cannabis/Marijuana,Culture,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,USA,Youth :

Scientists analysed medical data from more than 100 million people and found that the risk of stroke was 122% higher for amphetamine users and 96% higher for cocaine users compared with those who did not take the drugs.

Cannabis users were also at greater risk, suffering 37% more strokes than non-users, the review found, though researchers saw no evidence that opioids, a highly addictive painkiller, added to a person’s risk of stroke.

The rise in strokes observed in connection with some drugs was not confined to older people. When researchers focused on under-55s, they saw a near tripling in stroke risk among amphetamine users. The additional risk linked to cannabis was a more modest 14% in the age group, while the risk from cocaine was much the same at 97%.

Dr Megan Ritson, a research associate at the University of Cambridge and first author on the study, said: “Illicit drug use is a preventable stroke risk, but I don’t know if young people are aware how high the risk is.

“This is the first finding that has shown how different substance use disorders really can impact stroke risk.”

The researchers pooled data from 32 studies on stroke and recreational drugs, involving more than 100 million people, to see which substances, if any, were associated with a greater risk. This revealed links between drug use and strokes, but it could not prove the drugs were to blame: drug users may simply be more prone to strokes for other reasons, such as poorer general health.

To delve deeper, the researchers ran more analyses to see if drugs were the probable cause of higher stroke risk. They looked at whether people who were genetically predisposed to having a drug disorder were more likely to suffer a stroke and found they were. The finding bolstered the suspicion that drugs were to blame, rather than drug users being at greater risk for other reasons. Details are published in the International Journal of Stroke.

The drugs appear to raise stroke risk in multiple ways. Amphetamines and cocaine can send blood pressure soaring, but also constrict blood vessels in the brain, potentially explaining why users are at greater risk of both bleeds and blockages in the brain. Cocaine also seems to accelerate atherosclerosis, where cholesterol, fat and other substances build up in arteries, causing them to harden and narrow. Cannabis constricts blood vessels too, and may exacerbate the problem by encouraging the formation of blood clots.

Juliet Bouverie, the chief executive at the Stroke Association, said: “These substances put a person’s cardiovascular system under huge amounts of stress which can lead to increased blood clotting, narrowing of blood vessels and damage to the circulatory system – all of which can lead to stroke. Regular use of cocaine can also lead to high blood pressure, which is the cause of around half of all strokes.

“More people of all ages are having strokes which is leaving 240 people every day with life-changing disabilities – yet nine out of 10 strokes are preventable. We strongly advise that people follow simple steps to live a healthy lifestyle and reduce their risk of stroke including eating a colourful diet, not drinking too much alcohol, getting regular exercise, and not smoking, vaping, or taking any illegal drugs.”

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/mar/08/recreational-drugs-can-more-than-double-the-risk-of-stroke-study-suggests

Filed under: Cannabis/Marijuana,Cocaine,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Methamphetamine/GHB/Hallucinogens/Oxycodone,USA :
Elsevier

Current Opinion in Toxicology

Elsevier article – Volume 45 –March 2026,
by Payten M. Romero, Kennon J. Heard,  Nicholas R. Oblizajek, Abdul Qadeer,Robert W. Kirchoff,
Cannabis hyperemesis syndrome (CHS) is a disorder of gut-brain interaction with symptoms of nausea, severe episodic vomiting, and abdominal pain. The primary pathways implicated in CHS are the endocannabinoid system and the transient receptor potential vanilloid-1 pathway. The lack of cannabis standardization and Fusarium mycotoxin contamination may also play a role in the development of CHS. Hot showers, capsaicin, and antipsychotics – but not traditional anti-emetics – have been shown effective for symptom management. Until recently, there has not been a specific diagnosis code for CHS, making it difficult for healthcare providers to document CHS in electronic health records. This hindered proper surveillance and epidemiology studies. Further research is needed to characterize the cannabis composition, mechanism of action, and genetic susceptibility associated with CHS.

A case study

A 24-year-old male presents to the emergency department with a 5-day history of vomiting. During the evaluation, he is violently retching and struggles to answer questions. He reports that the symptoms today started when he awoke this morning and he has been vomiting every 10 min for the last 2 h. He states that he tried to take a bath because that has helped him in the past but today it did not help. The patient reports that he does not drink or smoke cigarettes, but that he started smoking cannabis 2 years ago and he smokes cannabis several times a day for his anxiety and that he has done this for the past 2 years.
On his examination, he appears very uncomfortable. His heart rate, respiratory rate, temperature, blood pressure, and pulse oximetry are normal. His mouth and lips appear dry but his exam is otherwise unremarkable and notably he has no abdominal tenderness.
A review of his medical records shows that he has been treated in the emergency room twice in the past week for similar symptoms. An extensive workup including laboratory studies, an abdominal ultrasound, and an abdominal computed tomography scan is normal. Specifically, in laboratory studies, the electrolytes and renal function were normal. Both times he was treated with intravenous fluids and ondansetron with minimal improvement and was discharged home with a prescription for ondansetron and instructions to follow up with a gastroenterologist scheduled in 2 weeks. He was also referred to addiction medicine and his primary care provider.
After the initial treatment, the patient continued to have repeated episodes of retching and complained of severe nausea. Given his recurrent vomiting, an unremarkable prior workup, and long history of daily cannabis use, the team diagnosed CHS. The team ordered intravenous fluids for hydration and laboratory studies to evaluate him for dehydration which showed mild dehydration. The team also administered haloperidol to treat his nausea.

What is cannabis hyperemesis syndrome?

Cannabis hyperemesis syndrome describes a collection of symptoms that include severe episodic vomiting and abdominal pain in patients who use cannabis frequently (usually daily) for a prolonged time (usually a year or more) [1]. It was first described in Australia in 2004 [2] and was considered uncommon. However, with the widespread decriminalization of cannabis in the U.S., clinicians noted an increase in patients presenting to emergency departments with cyclic vomiting who reported frequent cannabis use [3]. The prevalence of CHS is not well described due to a lack of diagnosis codes [4]. However, a new diagnosis code for CHS (R11.16) is now effective in the 10th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) starting on October 1, 2025 [5].

What causes cannabis hyperemesis syndrome?

Cannabis hyperemesis syndrome is sometimes referred to as cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome [1]. Despite the lack of mechanistic studies of CHS, literature reviews suggest the etiology of cannabinoid receptor 1 and 2 (CB1 and CB2) activation by tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) [∗∗6, ∗∗7, 8]. While the sensation of nausea is primarily a neurologic phenomenon, CHS is largely classified as a chronic disorder of gut-brain interaction, not primarily a neurologic disorder. Nausea is mediated by the area postrema and central emetic pathways. A key component of these pathways is the endocannabinoid system (ECS), which consists of a retrograde signaling pathway activated by CB1 in the CNS and gut [7]. The ECS is a neuromodulator and regulator of nausea and vomiting, especially during stress response [7]. Chronic use of cannabis down-regulates and de-sensitizes CB1 receptors [8]. This leads to a decrease in ECS signaling that is inversely correlated to the activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary stress axis (HPA) [9]. The increased activation of the HPA may account for the vomiting effect of anxiety, which is also observed in many patients with CHS. The cannabinoid etiology of CHS was extensively reviewed by Loganathan et al. (2024) [6].
Another plausible mechanism of CHS involves the transient receptor potential vanilloid-1 (TRPV1) channel-dependent pathway in the medulla, along gastric enteric and vagal nerves, and on cutaneous receptors in the dermis and epidermis [10]. Transient receptor potential vanilloid-1 is a polymodal, non-selective cation channel that can be activated by THC, low pH, and heat [10,11]. It is down-regulated and de-sensitized with prolonged exposure to cannabis, leading to nausea, altered gastric motility, and abdominal pain [10]. The TRPV1 channel also binds to capsaicin, a chemical found in chili peppers, which controls the release of substance P (a mediator involved in pain perception) and can alleviate the symptoms of CHS [1].
Genetic polymorphisms may also play a role in the onset of CHS symptoms (Figure 1) [12]. A preliminary study by Russo et al., in 2021 identified an association between CHS and genetic polymorphisms, including catechol-O-methyltransferase, which catabolizes dopamine; ATP-binding cassette transporter A1; TRPV1; the dopamine receptor D2 (DRD2); and the cytochrome P450 2C9 enzyme, which metabolizes THC in the liver [13]. However, the study had a limited sample size (n = 28) and was not validated in larger cohorts or incorporated into any diagnostic criteria. Other larger genome-wide association studies have examined genetic polymorphisms in cannabis use disorder [14,15], but vomiting is not examined as a phenotype in these studies. Further studies are needed to fully characterize the genetic profiles of patients with CHS.

Figure 1. Different causes of cannabis hyperemesis syndrome (CHS): Prolonged use, genetic backgrounds, and contaminant exposure. 

Cannabis hyperemesis syndrome is linked to prolonged use of cannabis. Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) activates cannabinoid receptor B1 and B2 (CB1 and CB2), with CB1 in the central nervous system being particularly relevant for emesis control, and THC also binds to transient receptor potential vanilloid-1 channels. Stimulation of CB receptors can lead to increased vagal nerve discharges contributing to vomiting. Some patients are more susceptible to the vomiting effect of high-dose THC due to their genetic backgrounds. Due to the lack of standardization in cannabis composition, production methods, and compliance testing, some patients may vomit due to exposure to cannabis contaminants (e.g., Fusarium mycotoxins) with a different mechanism of action.

What are the potential roles of cannabis standardization and Fusarium mycotoxins?

At the time of publication, cannabis is being rescheduled federally to a less restrictive Schedule III category in the U.S. [16]. Yet, cannabis remained listed in the U.S. as a controlled substance. Unlike other agricultural crops (e.g., tobacco), there is a lack of standardization in cannabis composition, production methods, and compliance testing in the state-legalized markets [17, ∗18, 19, 20]. Furthermore, black- and gray-market cannabis is estimated to account for over two-third of the cannabis market in the U.S. in 2022 [21] and the contamination level of pesticide residues, mycotoxins, and other chemicals in black- and gray-market cannabis is largely unknown. As such, it remains unclear whether the active components of cannabis (i.e., cannabinoids) are solely responsible for the etiology of CHS.
In a study in Arizona and California in 2025, Fusarium mycotoxins were found in one in six illegal cannabis samples [22]. The poisoning symptoms of Fusarium mycotoxins deoxynivalenol (vomitoxin), nivalenol, and T-2 toxin resemble the symptoms of CHS [23,24]. In an animal study [25], deoxynivalenol was shown to activate the transient receptor potential ankyrin 1 (another TRP channel different from TRPV1) and the calcium-sensing receptor, leading to increased vagal nerve discharges contributing to vomiting. Given that CHS appears with prolonged and frequent cannabis use and Fusarium contamination can vary from batch to batch, it is plausible that the sensation of cannabis use by itself may trigger vomiting via associative learning (i.e., classical conditioning). This mechanism has not been established as a primary etiology of CHS due to limited evidence in the literature. Furthermore, it is difficult to trace back any active components or contaminants of cannabis that could have accounted for the CHS patient’s visit to the emergency department. Further studies are needed to examine how cannabis composition is linked to CHS development.

Why do hot showers help?

One of the most notable aspects described by patients with CHS is the significant relief of symptoms with hot showers [26]. While not a universal feature, up to 90 % of patients report some relief [27]. It is important to note that the relieving effect of a hot shower is not unique to CHS, as a study in 2021 found that patients who did not use cannabis but had cyclic vomiting also demonstrated lessened nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain from a hot shower [28].
There are several theories for why hot showers may be effective in relieving symptoms of CHS. The most widely supported theory in the literature is the TRPV1 channel activation theory. Hot water at temperatures above 41 °C activates cutaneous TRPV1 channels, modulating emetic pathways and may provide antiemetic effects through the release and subsequent depletion of substance P and other neuropeptides. This is further supported by the observed efficacy of topical capsaicin, a TRPV1 agonist, in relieving CHS symptoms [1]. The second theory has to do with the fact that CB1 in the hypothalamus aids in thermoregulation [26]. Through CB1-mediated thermoregulation disruption, high doses of cannabis decrease heat production and cause hypothermia [26,29]. Hot water decreases sympathetic nervous system activation, relieving the hypothermic effects that occur with large amounts of use and cannabis accumulation in the body [26,30]. The third theory is referred to as the cutaneous steal syndrome theory. In this theory, cutaneous vasodilation from heat changes the core temperature and redirects splanchnic circulation, resulting in relief in gastrointestinal/abdominal symptoms and pain [26].

Why do standard anti-emetics not work and why are anti-psychotics so effective?

Anti-emetics are relatively ineffective at treating CHS [31, ∗∗32, 33]. A plausible explanation is that the pharmacotherapeutic targets of anti-emetics are not implicated in CHS. The most common anti-emetics for treating nausea and vomiting, such as ondansetron, are serotonin 3 receptor antagonists, which are not implicated or dysregulated in CHS [34]. Other anti-emetics, despite having different mechanisms of action for the most part, like promethazine and metoclopramide, were also found to be less effective in treating CHS [33]. Promethazine’s main mechanism of action is antagonism on histamine H1 receptors, with some anti-cholinergic, anti-muscarinic and other properties [35]. Metoclopramide mechanisms of actions include both antagonism to the serotonin 3 receptors and the dopamine 2 receptors [36]. The antagonism to the dopamine 2 receptor in metoclopramide has a short life, and extrapyramidal symptoms had arisen with higher doses of metoclopramide for treating nausea and vomiting [37]. With clinicians being possibly conservative about higher dose of metoclopramide, the standard dose being given (10 mg) has been suggested to not reach a clinically relevant anti-emetic effect [37].
While evidence supporting treatments for CHS is limited to case series and small clinical trials, anti-psychotics have been shown more effective in treating nausea, abdominal pain, and vomiting linked to CHS [33,38]. Anti-psychotics are often antagonists to DRD2 in the chemoreceptor trigger zone in the brainstem, which regulates nausea and vomiting [32,39, 40, 41]. Haloperidol, an anti-psychotic, modulates the HPA stress axis, which is posited to also be dysregulated in CHS through the down-regulation of CB1 receptors [42], suggesting that haloperidol modulates two areas of mechanisms implicated in CHS. Droperidol, another anti-psychotic, is effective in reducing the length of hospital stay and decreasing the use of opioids and other medications in CHS patients [43]. Overall, limited data suggest that the anti-emetics are not as effective as anti-psychotics.

Future directions

As cannabis legalization efforts continue in the U.S. and worldwide, CHS has become an increasingly common condition that leads to emergency room visits. The new ICD-10 diagnosis code for CHS can greatly improve surveillance and epidemiology studies, resulting in a better understanding of the public health impact of CHS. While different signaling pathways have been proposed as part of the CHS etiology, more mechanistic studies are needed to understand the interaction of these pathways and the role of genetic backgrounds in CHS development. As the contribution of illicit cannabis to CHS incidence remains unclear, a nationwide cannabis checking program similar to existing programs for street drugs [44] and other substances [45] can clarify the causal roles of cannabinoids and cannabis contaminants in CHS. For regulated cannabis, standardizing production methods and compliance testing (particularly for emetic agents such as Fusarium mycotoxins) can be a useful mitigation measure for CHS.

Source: Cannabis hyperemesis syndrome: Pharmacological and toxicological perspectives – ScienceDirect

Filed under: Cannabis/Marijuana,Drug use-various effects,Drug use-various effects on foetus, babies, children and youth,Health,Latest News,USA :
by Georgia Epiphaniou, Jacques Abou-Rizk, Medill Illinois News Bureau | Capitol News Illinois | February 27, 2026, 5:02 pm
Students with the Illinois Prevention Network at the Capitol on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026, pushing for bills aimed at drug regulation and reduction. (Courtesy of Kate Bell / Illinois Prevention Network)

by Georgia Epiphaniou, Jacques Abou-Rizk and Medill Illinois News Bureau, Capitol News Illinois

SPRINGFIELD — Youth advocates against substance abuse swarmed the Capitol this week, navigating their way into lawmakers’ offices, sharing their experiences in school and addressing what they viewed as gaps in Illinois’ drug and alcohol regulations.

Brought together by the Illinois Prevention Network – a coalition of organizations working to create safe, healthy and drug-free communities in Illinois – high schoolers canvassed the Capitol on Wednesday in support of bills aimed at reducing and regulating substance use throughout Illinois.

“Many kids, myself included, often feel as though we don’t have much power to do things and change things in the world,” Amber Diepenbrock, 14, of Wredling Middle School in St. Charles, said. “I’m here because I want to be able to represent kids my age more and talk about the problems I’m seeing in my own school.”

Kratom Regulation

Kratom is a plant that’s used as a stimulant and opioid substitute. Currently, it is only regulated by the 2014 Kratom Control Act, which makes it illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to purchase the substance. Five bills currently in House committees seek to amend or replace the act.

Kratom acts as a stimulant, but can also act as a cardiac or a respiratory depressant, similar to opioid. The drug is not Food and Drug Administration approved, with the organization warning consumers against its use because of the risk of serious adverse effects, including seizures, drug-induced liver injuries and substance-use disorder. In 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found salmonella contamination in kratom products. The FDA said it is often used “to self-treat conditions such as pain, coughing, diarrhea, anxiety and depression, opioid use disorder, and opioid withdrawal.”

House Bill 1303 and House Bill 3127 seek to raise the age restriction to 21 and prohibit child-attractive products while imposing a 5% retail tax. House Bill 3215 would create a registration and labeling system for kratom products.

House Bill 3129 would add kratom’s active compounds as Schedule III controlled substances and repeal the existing Kratom Control Act. It would essentially ban the substance in Illinois with the exception of some medical uses. Another bill, House Bill 4930, would take the hardest line, prohibiting the distribution, manufacture and sale of kratom entirely unless they have been approved by the FDA. All five were referred to the House Rules Committee in March, 2025, meaning they all have a long way to go legislatively.

Senate Bill 1570, which is also awaiting a committee assignment, would effectively ban kratom for all individuals, regardless of age.

Rep. Bill Hauter, R-Morton, citing six kratom-related deaths in Tazewell County in 2023, said there is a need to regulate the drug, but he emphasized a complete ban would be more effective.

“Nobody really knows (how it works), so it has to be regulated,” Hauter, who is a physician, said. “More and more, municipalities are just saying to ban it completely. It’s so easily available, and it’s hard to regulate it, so they’re just banning it totally so nobody can have it unless they go to a municipality where they can buy it.”

Yana Malpani, a 17-year-old senior at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois, who is also president of its Catalyst substance prevention program, said that she has observed excessive use of both unregulated cannabis derivatives and kratom among teenagers.

“This is because it’s so accessible at gas stations, feed shops and convenience stores, anyone can technically go and purchase it without realizing,” Malpani said.

A lot of kratom products, such as candy and vapes, are marketed with bright colors, enticing teenagers to purchase them.

“Kratom and delta-8 are being marketed as products that look identical to candies,” Malpani said. “We aren’t able to tell if it is candy or not unless you really look at the fine print.”

Lowering the Legal Blood-Alcohol Content Limit

The group also pushed for House Bill 4333, which aims to lower the legal blood-alcohol content limit from 0.08 to 0.05 for DUIs. The bill is awaiting a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee.

Fifteen percent of alcohol-related deaths happen to drivers with a BAC less than 0.08, and crash risks are seven times higher for those testing at 0.05 than sober driving, according to a Boston Medical Center study.

“Right now, if your blood alcohol content is at 0.08, you’ll get a DUI,” Malpani said. “The problem is at 0.06, you become legally and physically impaired to drive. But right now, I can be at 0.06 and get behind the wheel.”

Utah experienced a 19.8% drop in fatal crashes in one year after lowering the BAC to 0.05 in 2018, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Youth Advocacy for Drug and Alcohol Abuse Prevention

Diepenbrock emphasized that although she and other students are unable to vote, their voice plays an important role in the push to regulate drug and alcohol use among youth. She said she’s seen students pass vapes and other substances around in her school and the impact it has on teenagers.

“When you actually try and look deeper into it, you can see the effects and how it impacts not only an adult, but also a child,” Diepenbrock said. “A child may not get their hands on a drug, but their parents may, and that can heavily impact them.”

Hauter said that it is important to include the youth in the drafting of such legislation to raise awareness for the effects of drug usage.

“I think it’s time that Illinois took this seriously,” Hauter said. “I can’t believe it’s taken this long, because, you know, this is one of those things that we need to address.”

How drug and alcohol-use policy affects teenagers is often left out of legislation, Malpani said, failing to address a major contributor to underage DUIs. In 2024, 245 drivers in Illinois under the age of 21 lost their license due to drug and alcohol use while driving, according to a report by the secretary of state’s office.

Illinois State Police report that drivers under age 21 represent 10% of licensed drivers but are involved in 17% of alcohol-related fatal crashes and that crashes are a leading cause of death for teens.

“I think a lot of times policy around substance-use prevention is drafted by adults who don’t have a full understanding of how the policy affects their teens and high schoolers,” Malpani said. “So right now, I think having youth draft the policy themselves is so much more beneficial because we know how it affects us.”

Georgia Epiphaniou and Jacques Abou-Rizk are graduate students in journalism with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, and fellows in its Medill Illinois News Bureau working in partnership with Capitol News Illinois.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

Source: https://news.wttw.com/2026/02/27/high-schoolers-flood-state-capitol-advocate-drug-abuse-prevention-bills

Filed under: Age-related,Alcohol,Kratom,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Strategy and Policy,USA,Youth :
Submitted by Maggie Petito on behalf of drug-watch-international – 3-3-26
​​
 Alexander Browder of the UK’s Henry Jackson Society shares a new fully researched report on crypto, “a powerful tool for criminals and hostile governments. They move illicit finances without being caught. This report looks at how these groups use digital currencies to hide their illegal activities, and what this means for global security and law enforcement…”       
Drug monies now rely on crypto which of course enlarges the criminal range and profiteering. The report notes that ‘stablecoins’ enjoy weaker compliance and oversight, to the criminal’s benefit.
HENRY JACKSON SOCIETY REPORT:
Cryptocurrency has become a powerful tool for criminals and hostile governments. They move illicit finances without being caught. This report looks at how these groups use digital currencies to hide their illegal activities, and what this means for global security and law enforcement. It draws on a database of 164 cases from the past 20 years, showing just how large and fast-growing this problem has become.
Across these known cases, around $350 billion in illegal funds has been laundered through cryptocurrency. However, the response from authorities has been weak. Only 21% of cases have led to convictions, a third have never faced any legal action, and only 27% of stolen or illegal assets have been recovered. The report shows that stablecoins now play a major role in these schemes, including new coins created specifically to dodge international sanctions.
The problem is heavily concentrated in certain countries. Half of the illicit crypto exchanges were run from Russia. Major ransomware groups are largely based in Russia and Iran, and North Korea earns about a third of its government revenue from illegal crypto operations. At the same time, U.S. law‑enforcement seizures of cryptocurrency have fallen sharply, down 95% since 2021.
To tackle this growing threat, the report calls for specialist enforcement teams, stronger asset‑recovery systems, public risk alerts for investors, rewards for whistleblowers, and better use of AI to help detect and prevent abuse.
Executive Summary:
This report is the first overview of cryptocurrency-enabled money laundering based on a newly created proprietary database spanning 164 cases across 20 years (2005 to 2025). ..The report is broken down into three different categories reflecting the three traditional stages of money laundering: on-ramps (placement), layering and off-ramps (integration).
The report examines the trends and legal actions for each stage. Within the on-ramps (identified as entry points into cryptocurrency), the report highlights six different mechanisms – Darknet Marketplaces, Hacks, Ransomware, Ponzi Schemes, ATMs and Criminal Enterprises – which in total amount to $127 billion at time of occurrence, or $307 billion in present value. $90.2 billion has been seized through successful legal actions by international law enforcement authorities, representing only 29% of the total illicit funds processed through on-ramp channels. Within the layering stage, the report has examined four categories: on-chain, cross-chain, decentralised finance (DeFi) and digital coins. Each involves a range of different techniques and services. This report has highlighted five high-level techniques for on-chain, two techniques for cross-chain and four for DeFi. The most significant use has been in on-chain – through mixers, with $9.2 billion of illicit funds being moved through 10 mixers. They act as a key instrument for launderers to reduce the trace of their funds. The choice of coin is an important mechanism for layering, and the report presents a detailed table summarizing the key characteristics of the coins most adopted for laundering.
The report discusses 15 highly used instruments, including cryptocurrencies, privacy coins and stablecoins, and identifies particular features that make them susceptible for use in money laundering. The report demonstrates that, historically, Bitcoin (BTC) was the primary currency used for illicit transactions, reflecting its early adoption and dominance in cryptocurrency markets. However, stablecoins are now increasingly preferred, largely due to their reduced price volatility and the availability of off-ramps that, in some cases, operate under weaker oversight and compliance regimes. Within the off-ramps, the Global Cryptocurrency Laundering Database features 14 Centralised Exchanges (CEXs) and over-the-counter (OTC) products, and five payment platforms with a total of $22 billion of illicit outflows. CEXs have become the prominent method for criminals to turn their cryptocurrency into cash, and even regulated exchanges have had serious incidents of large amounts of laundering. From legal actions targeting off-ramp services, authorities have seized less than $500 million…With the banking system becoming well regulated, criminals looked for additional ways to launder money. Following the emergence of cryptocurrency, new opportunities to launder funds developed.
As the volume of cryptocurrency transactions soared, so did their use as a money laundering tool, representing a new, less understood and less regulated channel to move money…First, money has to enter the virtual space through different channels known as on-ramps. Bad actors may also leverage existing cryptocurrency holdings that are already present in the ecosystem, rather than acquiring new funds through external on-ramps. Next, the funds are typically obfuscated to reduce traceability back to their source. This process takes place through a variety of distinct layering patterns. Once the funds have been ‘cleaned’, most bad actors attempt to move the funds off the chain into fiat (via off-ramps), in order to completely break the traceability of the source and the funds…In conclusion, illicit marketplaces represent a major entry point for funds into the crypto currency ecosystem, and some platforms further integrate laundering mechanisms as an additional service.
Source: www.drugwatch.org … drug-watch-international
Filed under: Crime/Violence/Prison,Economic,Latest News,UK,USA :

As Cartels Collapse, Prevention Rises:

From PR Newswire- SAN FRANCISCO – 3 March 2026
While the death of drug kingpin and cartel leader “El Mencho” makes headlines, the Foundation for a Drug-Free World scored a touchdown through the distribution of 1,000,000 The Truth About Drugs booklets during Super Bowl LX in the San Francisco Bay Area.  The Foundation said the figures are based on internal distribution records that have been independently audited.

Foundation for a Drug-Free World volunteers at Super Bowl LX in San Francisco

Recent reporting has highlighted the death of Mexican cartel figure Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho.” BBC News reported he was killed in a confrontation with Mexican military forces in Tapalpa, Jalisco, on Feb. 22, 2026. El Mencho was Mexico’s most wanted cartel boss. He led the notorious Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which had become one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal organizations. While removing his name from the list of top fentanyl traffickers marks a victory, there are still 48.4 million people suffering from addiction in the United States—and some of them would do anything to get their next hit.

Addiction is not something a person can opt out of in a day. It holds its grip tightly and does not easily let go. “My goal in life wasn’t living… it was getting high,” says John, a recovering addict. “I kept saying to myself, I’m going to stop permanently after using one last time. It never happened.”

While not everyone can take down a cartel leader, everyone can take a stand against drugs through prevention. It is the key to stopping a young person from falling into addiction. Every addict started with a first hit. That is what the Foundation for a Drug-Free World works to prevent.

Through its educational materials, the Foundation provides factual information about drugs. The Truth About Drugs booklets do not simply tell someone to say no. They provide cold, raw data so individuals can make informed decisions. Each booklet describes what a specific drug is made of, what it does to the body and the mind, and its short- and long-term effects. It also includes testimonies from recovering addicts. By presenting factual information that speaks for itself, a person can decide never to take drugs.

In San Francisco, more people died from fentanyl in 2025 than the previous year. During Super Bowl LX, the Foundation launched a concentrated outreach effort, distributing one million The Truth About Drugs booklets across the San Francisco Bay Area. Some 350 volunteers rallied and gave out booklets to more than 6,800 shops for their customers in the days leading up to Super Bowl Sunday.

“I got out all my display boxes around El Cerrito today,” one volunteer says. “Dental offices, barber shops, insurance companies, nail and beauty shops, convenience stores, restaurants and a local medical college. Many of the places I placed the display boxes thanked me for volunteering for such a great cause.”

After losing 12 youth to fentanyl, a restaurant manager in Santa Clara welcomed The Truth About Fentanyl booklets. “I went to a barber shop and the guy accepted [the booklets],” another volunteer recounts. “He said he used to be a drug addict but maybe if he had known what drugs would do to his body, he would never have taken them.”

A woman who lost her son to a fentanyl overdose two years ago took a box of booklets to place at the front door of her church.

The Foundation for a Drug-Free World is a non-governmental drug education and prevention campaign. It holds Special Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). The Foundation provides a secular  ‘Truth About Drugs’ program.

Source: https://www.wfmz.com/online_features/press_releases/as-cartels-collapse-prevention-rises-foundation-for-a-drug-free-world-distributes-one-million-truth/article_c4064957-561a-5361-9794-53d57f691b78.html

Filed under: Culture,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Strategy and Policy,USA :

Kratom leaves, which contain psychoactive substances, come from a tree native to Southeast Asia. Traditionally used in countries like Thailand and Indonesia, kratom leaves are generally crushed and then can be consumed in various forms: smoked, vaped, powdered in beverages, liquid extract “shots,” or taken as capsules. However, we are now seeing Kratom in all forms pop up in the United States in smoke shops, gas stations, convenience stores, and online.

The most recent usage data of kratom reports that about 1.6 million people in the United States use kratom.1 Kratom, which is an opioid, has what might seem like strange effects; at lower doses, kratom acts like a stimulant, while at higher doses, can act like a sedative. People take the drug for all sorts of (not scientifically supported) reasons, such as pain, anxiety, depression, etc.

Despite its accessibility, kratom is intoxicating, impairing, and can pose serious health risks. It is not controlled by the Controlled Substances Act, nor is it approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for any medical use. The FDA warns consumers not to use kratom “because of the risk of serious adverse events, including liver toxicity, seizures, and substance use disorder (SUD)”.2 Further research indicates that up to one-third of users may experience adverse side effects, which can include cardiac arrest, liver damage, seizures, brain hemorrhaging, and even overdose deaths.3 Kratom has been labeled as a “drug of concern,” with a particular focus on products containing 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH), a potent component found naturally in kratom, but which is readily being synthesized into higher concentrations to create a stronger effect for users.

The presence of 7-OH in kratom products is particularly concerning for employers. This opioid-like substance can lead to severe health complications, including addiction and withdrawal symptoms similar to those experienced with traditional opioids. Employers may face challenges in workplace testing and safety protocols due to the unregulated nature of kratom. As kratom use increases, the likelihood of employees using it at work or being impaired by its effects rises, leading to potential safety hazards and decreased productivity.

Employers must also be aware that traditional drug tests may not detect kratom or its metabolites, making it difficult to identify users. This gap in testing can lead to a false sense of security and complicate workplace safety initiatives. As a result, businesses should consider implementing specific policies regarding psychoactive substance use (including drugs legally available) and conduct regular training for employees about the risk of drug use affecting the workplace environment.

Recognizing that some employees may be using kratom is vital for maintaining a safe and productive work environment. Educating your team about the risks associated with kratom use can be an effective first step – check out this FDA created resource that illustrates the dangers of kratom. Consider fostering open discussions about substance use in a supportive environment and establish a clear substance use policy that helps set expectations and outlines potential consequences for impairment on the job. By promoting health resources, such as counseling and support services, you provide employees with the tools they need to address any substance-related challenges.

As kratom continues to gain traction, it’s vital for employers to stay informed. By fostering a culture of awareness and support, you can help ensure a safe and productive workplace for your employees.

Source: Drug Free America Foundation | 333 3rd Avenue N Suite 200 | St. Petersburg, FL 33701 US
Filed under: Drug use-various effects,Kratom,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Treatment and Addiction,USA,Workplace :

Forwarded by Maggie Petito   – From  UK Spectator – February 23, 2026 

The truth about Mexico’s cartel wars

Spectator  UK – February 23, 2026 by Joshua Treviño. (Treviño is the chief transformation officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and a senior fellow of the Western Hemisphere Initiative at the America First Policy Institute).

To understand the latest disturbing spasm of violence in Mexico, it helps to go back six years to an ultra-wealthy colonia called Lomas de Chapultepec, near the heart of Mexico City.

Lomas de Chapultepec is protected, partly by a large security apparatus net that has been thrown around it, and partly by the pacto de narco, which protects the high-income neighborhoods in which both cartel leadership and their political partners live, along with their families.

Not long ago, former Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was publicly threatening to use the Mexican armed forces to defend cartels

That was why it was surprising when, on June 26, 2020, Mexico City’s chief of police Omar Garcia Harfuch was attacked on the Paseo de la Reforma by a hit squad armed with heavy-caliber weaponry. Wounded, he escaped with his life, although two accompanying policemen did not.

This shocking eruption of military-grade violence inside Mexico City’s wealthiest colonia was swiftly attributed to the bloodthirsty and sociopathic leader of the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes: the man known as El Mencho.

Yesterday, Omar Garcia Harfuch – who is now Mexico’s Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection – struck back. El Mencho failed to kill him, therefore he has killed El Mencho.

The Mexican state’s account of events holds that El Mencho and his men attacked the force sent to arrest him, and that the CJNG boss died of wounds en route to treatment. Mexico also said that the United States forces provided intelligence and unspecified support to the Mexican effort, without any presence on the scene. One may or may not believe this. Those in the know are not issuing the press statements.

What’s clear is that the targeting of El Mencho was meant to address and appease two mutually antagonistic parties. One is the Americans, who demand ever-greater deliverables from the Mexican state in the cartel wars. The other is the ideological core of Mexico’s ruling Morena party, which is fundamentally anti-American and would react to a US presence with something close to revolt. It was not so very long ago – the spring of 2023, in fact – that the creator and central figure of Morena, former Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, was publicly threatening to use the Mexican armed forces to defend cartels against any American action against them.

If his successor, current Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, has allowed direct American action now, it is an epochal break with her own benefactor who bestowed the office upon her. As things stand, the effort to both claim and disclaim American involvement carries a sense of protesting too much.

Two consequences of the hit now present themselves. The first and most-dramatic is the spasm of violence across much of Mexico, including well-known tourist areas. CJNG personnel are swarming into areas previously considered off-limits to the cartel wars. The organization that violated the peace of Lomas de Chapultepec is now doing the same to international airports, to Puerta Vallarta, to Guadalajara and beyond.

The actions appear to be comparable to those one might expect of heavy infantry units, equipped with anti-armor and anti-aircraft weaponry. The Mexican armed forces, clearly caught off guard, are slowly responding. But the reaction ought not to have been a surprise: in the Culiacanazo of October 2019, Sinaloa-cartel militia conducted a similar operation after an arrest of one of El Chapo’s sons. This is a known organizational response by major cartels when challenged by the state, and the state’s unreadiness can be explained by plain incompetence – or by an inability to trust the broader security apparatus with news of the impending raid.

As the fighting progresses, watch the speed at which the Mexican armed forces reassert control, as they likely will. Well-armed as CJNG and the major cartels are, the strongest force in the country remains the formal state. If the matter becomes pressing, America could offer intelligence and targeting assistance – none of which will become public knowledge.

Watch also the extent to which CJNG chooses to exact vengeance upon any of the several million US citizens in Mexico, now that the Mexican state has given the Americans partial credit for El Mencho’s death. The targeting of American citizens as such would of necessity draw in the direct and public involvement of the United States.

Various members of the Mexican and American establishments are proclaiming that the death of El Mencho is proof that the Mexican regime is, at long last, serious in its fight against the cartels. This is slightly naive. The traditional cartel partner of the Morena regime is the Sinaloa cartel, which, although presently in violent flux, has a perennial and bloody rivalry with CJNG.

The Mexican state will continue to offer up big-name cartel figures ad infinitum, but their elimination alone changes little. What would be transformative is bringing to account the politicians who enable, protect and promote cartels. These men are at the very heart of Mexico’s Morena regime. That is what a true strategic win would look like, and it is what the United States must resolutely pursue.

 Source: www.drugwatch.org

Filed under: Crime/Violence/Prison,Culture,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Others (International News),Prevention and Intervention,Treatment and Addiction,UK :

 by Kerry Charron – Feb 22, 2026

A study published in the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma indicated that regular family dinners may be an effective substance use prevention strategy for many American teens.  

Researchers affiliated with Tufts University School of Medicine analyzed online survey data from 2,090 adolescents (ages 12-17) and their parents. They answered questions about the quality of their family meals, which focused on communication, enjoyment, logistics, and digital distractions. The survey also covered questions about teen alcohol, e-cigarette, and cannabis use in the previous six months.

The researchers analyzed how these patterns differed based on teens’ experiences of household stressors and exposure to violence. The research team developed a weighted score based on how strongly the various experiences are linked to substance use in prior research and this national sample.

The findings revealed that higher family dinner quality was linked with a 22-34% lower prevalence of substance use among teens who had either experienced no or low to moderate levels of adverse childhood experiences. Examples of adverse childhood experiences reported by study participants included the impact of divorce, substance abuse, mental health challenges, and domestic violence. In addition, teens who experienced teasing about their weight or sexual or physical dating violence were some other critical influences.  

Lead study author Dr. Margie Skeer, professor and chair of the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at the School of Medicine, emphasized that family meals are a practical and effective intervention that decreases the risk of teen substance use. She explained, “Routinely connecting over meals—which can be as simple as a caregiver and child standing at a counter having a snack together—can help establish open and routine parent-child communication and parental monitoring to support more positive long-term outcomes for the majority of children.” The findings highlight how family meals facilitate positive parent-child relationships and interactions.  

However, the study also suggested that family meals may not be effective for adolescents who have experienced significant childhood adversity. Teens who endured more significant stressors may benefit from more intensive and trauma-informed approaches.  

Source: https://www.labroots.com/trending/health-and-medicine/30227/study-examined-link-family-dinners-teen-substance-prevention-2

Filed under: Culture,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Parents,Prevalence,Prevention and Intervention,USA,Youth :

 

  • Yngvild Olsen and Sunny Patel – February 25, 2026

Ms. B (identified by first initial of last name for privacy) had never told anyone about the sexual abuse she had suffered at the hands of her uncle as a young child. For years during her adolescence, the secret festered, driving her to run away from home, drop out of school, and begin drinking and taking opioids to numb the pain.

It wasn’t until she was sitting in a brightly lit room with other women at the clinic where she had started treatment for her opioid use disorder, surrounded by rainbow-colored positive affirmations, drinking a cup of hot coffee, and laughing at a joke the peer specialist had just told, that she felt safe enough to start telling her story.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) grant funds had paid for the affirmation signs, the coffee, and the salary for the peer specialist. Ms. B was one of many women that year who benefitted from this care designed specifically to address the trauma that contributed to the development of their substance use disorders. And it was working.

Yet on January 13, that progress for Ms. B and many others was threatened. With no announcement or reasoning, the federal government abruptly cut $2 billion in already awarded grants to SAMHSA—an agency likely unfamiliar to most Americans, but one that undergirds and forms the safety net for the country’s behavioral health system. There was no warning for an agency already cut by $1 billion last year, hit with significant staff reductions, and poised to be subsumed under a new proposed entity, the Administration for a Healthy America, within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Programs across the country were zeroed out overnight. Only after intense public outcry did the administration reverse course.

In early February, Congress passed bipartisan appropriations to preserve SAMHSA’s structure and funding, clearly signaling the little agency and its work is essential to the nation’s behavioral health system. This is welcome relief to the uncertainty just weeks ago. Adding to a recent focus on behavioral health, President Trump issued a related Executive Order, Addressing Addiction Through the Great American Recovery Initiative, on January 29. This order establishes a new interagency taskforce to provide recommendations and guidance for better coordination and alignment of relevant federal programs. On February 2, HHS Secretary Kennedy announced a new $100 million SAMHSA grant program, the Safety Through Recovery, Engagement, and Evidence-based Treatment and Supports, or STREETS Initiative, to fund outreach, mental health care, medical stabilization, crisis intervention, and linkages to housing for people experiencing homelessness and addiction.

These are welcome, if unclear, actions, and they come on the heels of the whiplash caused by mass grant cancellation and reversal—a terrifying stress test that exposed just how fragile America’s behavioral health infrastructure has become.

This is juxtaposed with recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that demonstrated another remarkable and welcome increase in life expectancy in America on the heels of reductions in overdose mortality. However, much of the federal infrastructure that contributed to this progress was nearly dismantled overnight.

Confusion About Behavioral Health Care And The Role Of SAMHSA

What happened in mid-January reveals a deeper misunderstanding of how behavioral health care actually works in America, and why weakening SAMHSA puts lives at risk.

Despite progress, substance-related conditions, including accidents and unintentional injuries, and suicides remain among leading causes of death for people ages 25–64 in the United States. Millions of Americans continue to struggle with untreated or inadequately treated substance use disorders and mental illness. And communities everywhere—urban, rural, tribal—are grappling with shortages of trained providers, fragmented systems, and rising demand for services.

SAMHSA is the only federal public health agency whose sole mission is to address the full continuum of behavioral health needs—from prevention to treatment to supporting individuals in recovery. Its work does not replace direct clinical care. It often funds services that fall outside of traditional insurance models yet exist as glue in a system.

Take overdoses, for instance. SAMHSA funding has enabled states to saturate their communities with naloxone, a life-saving overdose reversal medication. SAMHSA investments have supported training for first responders and community organizations on how to recognize and respond to overdose. These investments are not abstract. They show up in emergency departments, resulting in fewer fatal overdoses, and in communities where people survive long enough because of SAMHSA funding to engage with treatment and sustain recovery.

As former career federal officials at SAMHSA and as physicians who continue to see patients, we’ve seen the agency’s work and impacts firsthand at the individual, family, and community levels. We’ve also seen how the programmatic expertise SAMHSA brings has helped other federal agencies make major systems level changes; examples include 1) the Drug Enforcement Administration’s regulatory flexibilities allowing for telehealth initiation of buprenorphine for the treatment of opioid use disorder, and 2) the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services promulgating a new billing code for peer support services in the 2024 Physician Fee Schedule. SAMHSA’s unique focus on the behavioral health needs of the country is what makes its role and work so special.

SAMHSA also recognizes that the work of saving lives and improving behavioral health wellbeing is done on the ground by trained and knowledgeable individuals. Few federal agencies other than SAMHSA fund the ongoing training and technical assistance needed to make sure the public health, public safety, and health care professionals serving people with, or at risk for, behavioral health conditions are up on the latest research and best practices. For example, grant programs such as the Addiction and Prevention Technology Transfer Centers, Center for Mental Health Implementation Support, and Opioid Response Network have provided cutting-edge support to thousands of public health and health care professionals, first responders and other public safety officials, state level professionals, and policymakers.

Many of these services and training/technical assistance grants were on the chopping block just a few weeks ago. Even though the cuts were ultimately restored, the whiplash furthered an unnerving sense of instability that began in spring 2025 with Secretary Kennedy’s announcement of a planned new Administration for a Healthy America that would comprise SAMHSA and several other HHS operating divisions. Collectively, these actions have undermined workforce morale, disrupted planning, and eroded trust in the federal government being a reliable partner. The grant funds were restored; the trust was not.

Looking Forward

The next question is what happens now that the fiscal year funding has passed.

Appropriations language alone does not ensure implementation. Take, for instance, the prior massive workforce reductions at the agency and the sudden $1 billion cut last year that required 23 states and the District of Columbia to file suit and obtain injunctions to continue the flow of funding. Most recently, on January 23, $5 billion in essential public health infrastructure funding by CDC to local health departments around the country was suddenly paused and then “unpaused” 24 hours later; these dollars were also appropriated by Congress. And a recent article in Health Affairs Forefront found that SAMHSA had spent only 34.6 percent of its FY 2025 budget allocation, based on a review of USAspending.gov accounts. 

Congress must exercise sustained oversight to ensure the administration fully executes on the will of Congress, that grants are reliably administered, and that the workforce and technical assistance infrastructure are rebuilt rather than quietly hollowed out. Such robust oversight and accountability functions have been lacking. Thus, it will be important for SAMHSA grantees, state behavioral health administrators, family members, and others with a vested interest to raise issues and concerns with their Congressional representatives regularly and urgently when there are future drastic changes to funding and programs. Ensuring that individuals, families, and communities impacted by substance use get the help they need is a bipartisan concern.

We also need hearings on what has happened, as well as Office of Inspector General and Government Accountability Office reports on the work SAMHSA and related agencies are doing and where they are falling short. We need active engagement with Congressional representatives where these dollars are awarded (and that’s every state and territory in the United States) to ensure that the money allocated is being disbursed by the government and reaching the communities it is intended to serve. The lesson of January is that sustained advocacy works, but vigilance is required to ensure follow-through on Congressional intent for appropriated funding.

SAMHSA may be little known to the general public, but its work touches millions of lives. Weakening it when the nation is finally turning the corner on the overdose crisis is a risk we cannot afford to take. Saving it once is not enough; ensuring its stability is the next test. Ultimately, the measure of our national commitment will be whether Congress secures long-term stability for SAMHSA.

Ms. B found her voice in a room funded by a government grant. We must ensure that those healing spaces continue to exist, the lights are still on, and the peer specialist is still employed when the next person walks through the door seeking help.

Authors’ Note:

Manatt Health works with a diverse group of clients, including states; state and federal policy makers and agencies; payers; health care providers and systems; foundations; associations; consumer organizations; and pharmaceutical, biotech, and device companies.

Dr. Olsen is a member of the American Society for Addiction Medicine (ASAM), serves on an ASAM Criteria Implementation Committee, and has a small clinical advisory role with them.

Source: https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/forefront/congress-has-preserved-substance-abuse-and-mental-health-services-administration-samhsa

Filed under: Addiction,Drug use-various effects,Health,Latest News,Mental Health,Prevention and Intervention,Strategy and Policy,Treatment and Addiction,USA :

Press Release by media@phi.org – Oakland, CA –

Adolescents who use cannabis could face a significantly higher risk of developing serious psychiatric disorders by young adulthood, according to a large new study published today in JAMA Health Forum. The longitudinal study followed 463,396 adolescents ages 13 to 17 through age 26 and found that past-year cannabis use during adolescence was associated with a significantly higher risk of incident psychotic (doubled), bipolar (doubled), depressive and anxiety disorders. The study was conducted by researchers from Kaiser Permanente, the Public Health Institute’s Getting it Right from the Start, the University of California, San Francisco and the University of Southern California, and was funded by a grant from NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA0531920).

The study analyzed electronic health record data from routine pediatric visits between 2016 and 2023. Cannabis use preceded psychiatric diagnoses by an average of 1.7 to 2.3 years. The study’s longitudinal design strengthens evidence that adolescent cannabis exposure is a potential risk factor for developing mental illness.

“As cannabis becomes more potent and aggressively marketed, this study indicates that adolescent cannabis use is associated with double the risk of incident psychotic and bipolar disorders, two of the most serious mental health conditions,” said Lynn Silver, M.D., program director of the Getting it Right from the Start, a program of the Public Health Institute, and a study co-author.

Cannabis is the most used illicit drug among U.S. adolescents. The Monitoring the Future study shows use rising with grade level — from about 8% in 8th grade to 26% in 12th grade — and according to the 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, more than 10% of all U.S. teens aged 12 to 17 report past-year use. At the same time, average THC levels in California cannabis flower now exceed 20%, far higher than in previous decades, and concentrates can exceed 95% THC.

Unlike many prior studies, the research examined any self-reported past-year cannabis use, with universal screening of teens during standard pediatric care, rather than focusing only on heavy use or cannabis use disorder.

“Even after accounting for prior mental health conditions and other substance use, adolescents who reported cannabis use had a substantially higher risk of developing psychiatric disorders — particularly psychotic and bipolar disorders,” said Kelly Young-Wolff, Ph.D., lead author of the study and senior research scientist at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research.

The study also found that cannabis use was more common among adolescents enrolled in Medicaid and those living in more socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods, raising concerns that expanding cannabis commercialization could exacerbate existing mental health disparities.

SOURCE: https://www.phi.org/press/study-adolescent-cannabis-use-linked-to-doubling-risk-of-psychotic-and-bipolar-disorders/

###

Filed under: Addiction,Age-related,Brain and Behaviour,Cannabis/Marijuana,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Mental Health,Treatment and Addiction,USA,Youth :

PSYCHOLOGY TODAY

by Mark Gold MD – Addiction Outlook – February 21, 2026 

Connecting with a ‘higher power’ works in prevention, treatment, and recovery.

Main points:

  • 48.5 million people in the U.S. have diagnosable alcohol and other drug disorders.
  • Researchers found that spiritual practices positively affect alcohol, marijuana, and drug addiction recovery.
  • For individuals who value spirituality, these opportunities may also improve prevention and recovery.

For years, Alcoholics Anonymous and related organizations have emphasized that members should seek help from their “higher power,” however they conceptualize that entity. Now, a new JAMA Psychiatry meta-analysis supports this view. The investigators synthesized data from 55 rigorous longitudinal studies, including 540,712 participants. These studies followed participants from six months to 20+ years, most spanning multiple years. Across alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and other illicit drugs, researchers found a statistically significant protective association between spirituality and more favorable substance use outcomes.

Higher levels of spiritual engagement were associated with a 13 percent reduction in risk of harmful or hazardous use across prevention and recovery contexts. For example, among individuals attending religious services more than weekly, the risk reduction was 18 percent.

“Meta-analyses of such longitudinal studies on spirituality and health are rare. This is a sort of once-in-a-decade advance,” said senior author of the study from the Harvard School of Public Health Tyler VanderWeele, PhD. “The consistency of the results across all the studies—including over a dozen studies conducted outside of the U.S.—was striking, with all but a few showing a protective, not detrimental, effect.” The study defined spirituality broadly, including religious service attendance, private practices such as prayer or meditation, 12-step programs, and community-based practices.

Substance use disorders are shaped by genetic vulnerability, environmental exposure, developmental timing, psychiatric comorbidity, and social determinants of health. To identify a psychosocial factor that prospectively predicted a lower incidence of drug and alcohol addiction among varied populations in a variety of countries is highly significant. The protective role of spirituality is particularly salient in youth. Early initiation of alcohol or drug use is strongly associated with poor school and social development, higher addiction liability, higher severity, and worse long-term outcomes. If spiritual engagement delays initiation or reduces progression to hazardous patterns, even modest reductions could translate to substantial public health benefits.

While no one knows exactly how spirituality is so effective, possible mechanisms include social support embedded within religious communities, strong social norms favoring abstinence or moderation, internalized ethical systems that discourage intoxication, the power of prayer, and helping others, which provide meaning and purpose that lower reliance on substances for mood regulation. Emerging neuroscientific research suggests meditation, prayer, and other contemplative practices may influence neural circuits involved in stress regulation, reward processing, and interpersonal bonding, though this remains a field for further investigation.

Consistent With Other Research

These new results extend and reinforce an already-substantial body of work examining spiritually oriented mutual-help organizations, most prominently Alcoholics Anonymous and related 12-step programs. Although AA is often discussed primarily as a peer-support model, it is also grounded in spiritual principles, including reliance on a higher power as understood by the individual. Earlier meta-analyses of randomized trials examining 12-step facilitation have shown significant benefits compared with no treatment. But effect sizes have sometimes been comparable to those of other active treatments, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy. However, a 2020 Cochrane review of 27 studies concluded AA and 12-step facilitation were at least as effective as other established treatments and, in some analyses, superior in sustaining abstinence at 12 months.

Alcoholics Anonymous

In 2014, Kelly and Greene demonstrated increases in spirituality during AA participation partially mediated by improved alcohol outcomes. Gains in meaning, purpose, and connection to a higher power were associated with reductions in drinking, even after accounting for other factors. Importantly, spirituality in this context was linked to identifiable psychological processes, including augmented coping skills, reduced negative mood, improved self-regulation, and expanded recovery-supportive social networks. Kelly and Eddie later showed in a national U.S. sample that spirituality and religiosity were independently associated with a greater likelihood of recovery and remission from alcohol and other drugs. These studies provide an explanatory scaffold for the newest findings.

Sociocultural context also matters. Earlier work by Kaskutas and colleagues found differences in AA affiliation at treatment intake between Black and White Americans. Survey data indicated more than 1 in 2 African American respondents endorsed spirituality/religion as central to their recovery, compared with 1 in 4 White respondents.

In the past, I highlighted the language and culture of 12-step programs, emphasizing that sayings heard in AA and NA, such as “One day at a time,” are not simply slogans; they are behavioral micro-interventions. These phrases operationalize relapse prevention principles by reducing catastrophic thinking, thereby promoting better present-moment decision-making.

Recovery Capital

Recovery capital is the sum of internal and external resources supporting sustained remission, including organized religions, positive social networks, employment, housing stability, coping skills, and psychological health. Spiritual well-being is one dimension. Longitudinal cohort studies suggest that higher spiritual well-being predicts reductions in substance use frequency, particularly in early recovery.

Spirituality may strengthen resilience by fostering hope, reinforcing prosocial values, and providing supportive communities. In contrast to pharmacotherapies such as naltrexone or acamprosate, which target neurobiological reinforcement pathways, and psychotherapies such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, which target maladaptive cognitions and behaviors, spiritually mediated pathways operate in existential and relational realms. These domains address dimensions of suffering often underemphasized in clinical settings.

Early Intervention and Spirituality

Many individuals who drink heavily do not yet meet the criteria for alcohol use disorder. Screening and brief interventions in primary care can reduce risk and prevent progression. The new longitudinal data suggest spirituality and religious engagement may be ideal interventions during early use or before addiction is firmly entrenched. Whether using religious service attendance, meditation, self-help groups, or other spiritually oriented communities, individuals may access social and psychological supports and reduce the likelihood of transitioning from any use to addiction.

This new 2026 study does not suggest that physicians direct patients toward specific religious beliefs; instead, it highlights spirituality as a potentially protective factor that merits assessment. Asking patients whether spirituality or religion is important in their lives and whether it plays a role in coping can open the door to patient-centered discussions. For those already valuing spiritual engagement, encouragement to connect with supportive communities or practices may augment prevention or recovery efforts.

Substance use and addictions remains one of the largest public health challenges of our time. If spirituality is associated with even a modest reduction in use across multiple substances, collaborations between health systems and community spiritual organizations could expand prevention and recovery resources. Spirituality is a potentially protective factor meriting assessment.

Summary

The 2026 meta-analysis reported in JAMA Psychiatry offers rigorous longitudinal evidence that spiritual engagement correlates with a lower risk of drug or alcohol problems in people already experiencing such problems, as well as better outcomes in treatment and relapse prevention. This finding is consistent with decades of research on Alcoholics Anonymous outcomes, demonstrating that spirituality promotes recovery coping, identity transformation, social integration, and meaning-making.

SOURCE: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/addiction-outlook/202602/aa-and-na-were-right-spirituality-decreases-addictions

Filed under: Culture,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Prevalence,Prevention and Intervention,USA,Youth :
by Maurizio Guerrero, Educational Content Editor; Pat Aussem, L.P.C., M.A.C., Vice President, Consumer Clinical Content Development

Published November 2025

Naloxone: Frequently Asked Questions

Learn more about the opioid overdose reversal medication naloxone (also known by the brand name Narcan).

Xylazine

Overdoses linked to xylazine are spreading. Read on to learn how to protect yourself and your loved one.

You may have heard about dangerous substances mixed with fentanyl, like xylazine and medetomidine. Now there’s a new worry: BTMPS. This industrial chemical is normally used to make plastic products, but it’s been showing up in fentanyl across many cities since late 2024.

Like other additives, BTMPS makes fentanyl even more dangerous and harder to treat during overdoses. It has also been found in some meth and cocaine samples, but this is rare. Unlike other additives, BTMPS doesn’t make people high or sleepy on its own.

This article explains what we know about BTMPS and how it affects people who use drugs. 

What is BTMPS?

 BTMPS is a white powder that’s sold under the brand name Tinuvin® 770. Companies use it to protect plastic from sun damage. They add BTMPS to plastics and other materials to stop them from breaking down when exposed to heat and sunlight.

BTMPS is not approved for use in people or animals. It’s also not regulated in the U.S. Unlike other substances added to illegal drugs (like xylazine and medetomidine), BTMPS doesn’t get people high.<sup>[1]</sup>

This chemical has mostly been found in fentanyl. Sometimes it shows up in stimulants like meth and cocaine too.<sup>[2]</sup> 

Where Has BTMPS Been Found?

 BTMPS first appeared in Philadelphia fentanyl samples in June 2024. By November, researchers found it in more than half of the samples they tested there. Around the same time, it started showing up in Los Angeles fentanyl samples.

By the end of 2024, BTMPS was in 6 out of every 10 fentanyl samples tested in these cities.
Researchers also tested drug equipment from Delaware, Maryland, Nevada, Washington, Puerto Rico, and parts of California. They found BTMPS in 3 out of every 10 fentanyl samples from these places.[3]

By late 2024, BTMPS had been detected in fentanyl samples in almost every state.[4] 

Why is BTMPS Mixed with Fentanyl?

Since BTMPS doesn’t make people high, experts wonder why it’s being added to fentanyl and other drugs.
One reason might be that BTMPS, like xylazine and medetomidine, lowers blood pressure. This can create a calming effect that adds to fentanyl’s effects.

Other experts think it might be used as a cheap filler. Drug makers could use BTMPS to stretch their fentanyl supply, making more product while spending less money. This dilution might also make fentanyl less potent.

Another theory is that manufacturers add BTMPS to keep fentanyl stable longer, using its sun-protection properties to make the drug last longer.[5]

Most experts agree that BTMPS is probably added during production, not later. This is because it’s found all across the country, not just in specific regions like xylazine.[6] 

What Are the Effects of BTMPS?

 We don’t know much about how BTMPS affects humans because there’s very little research. However, studies on rats showed that BTMPS reduced nicotine use and lessened withdrawal symptoms from morphine and cocaine.[7]

The rat studies also showed serious health problems from BTMPS exposure, including:

  • Heart defects
  • Severe eye damage
  • Death

The safety information for BTMPS warns that it can cause:

  • Serious eye damage
  • Skin irritation
  • Harm to unborn babies

People who have used drugs containing BTMPS report that these substances don’t work as well as drugs without BTMPS.

Users have reported these symptoms after taking substances with BTMPS:

  • Blurry vision
  • Burning eyes
  • Ringing in the ears
  • Nausea
  • Coughing
  • Burning feeling when injected
  • Chemical smell (like plastic or bug spray)[8]

What Are the Risks?

 Harm reduction experts worry that people who regularly use fentanyl with high amounts of BTMPS might develop a lower tolerance to regular fentanyl. This could increase their risk of overdose if they later use fentanyl without BTMPS.

Animal studies suggest BTMPS might cause:

    • Heart problems like low blood pressure and weak heart contractions
    • Brain and nerve problems like muscle weakness and droopy eyelids

[9]

BTMPS blocks calcium channels in the body, which makes overdoses harder to reverse. Doctors need to give patients medicine to raise their blood pressure and heart rate, but BTMPS makes this difficult. Treatment might be even less effective for patients who already take calcium channel blockers for high blood pressure or heart disease.[10] 

How to Protect Your Loved One from BTMPS

 Even though BTMPS doesn’t directly stop breathing like fentanyl does, it’s usually found with fentanyl. This means naloxone (Narcan) should still be given right away during suspected overdoses.

Ask your loved one to carry naloxone and make sure they know how to use it; you can learn more about this here.

It is also very important that they avoid using substances alone and always have someone watching out for them. If that is not possible, encourage them to consider services like Never Use Alone, a nationwide 24/7/365 toll-free service that connects people who use substances with a trained operator who will supervise that the person uses safely.

Doctors should provide standard overdose treatment plus extra care for problems that BTMPS might cause.
There are no test strips for BTMPS like there are for fentanyl and xylazine. Healthcare providers and medical examiners don’t routinely test for BTMPS either. This means they wouldn’t know if someone had taken BTMPS unless they specifically looked for it.

BTMPS can be identified with special machines called portable spectrometers that some community drug testing programs use. If drug checking services are available in your area, harm reduction professionals suggest having substances tested regularly. So, ask your loved one to use these services when they are accessible.

Source: https://drugfree.org/article/btmps-in-fentanyl-what-parents-need-to-know-about-this-emerging-chemical/

Filed under: Fentanyl,Latest News,Parents,Prevention and Intervention,USA :

A 9-year-old boy in Washington lives in a tent with his fentanyl-addicted parents. He waits outside in the bushes while his mother exchanges sex for money and drugs. He doesn’t attend school or see a doctor. He appears underweight and ill. 

Repeated offers of assistance — including housing — from social workers are refused by his parents. Now what?

The state’s answer is clear: the child protection system (CPS) will do nothing to protect this child because homelessness and drug use are “not neglect.”

Chronic drug use is increasingly seen as something that can be managed alongside caring for children, even medically fragile newborns. Parents in Oregon are encouraged to ask for naloxone (Narcan) without fear of stigma so that they can revive their children if their drug supply is inadvertently ingested. Lock boxes are recommended or distributed by CPS and other public agencies, often under the pretext of preventing accidental ingestions of prescription fentanyl, legal cannabis or other medications. America’s Poison Centers reminds adults who use fentanyl that naloxone can be safely used on children. 

At a recent national forum, a former New Mexico state legislator described how CPS safety plans often ask parents to please dispose of their foils and clean their spoons before their children return home from school or child care. Parents in Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, New Mexico, New York and Texas (to name just a few) are led — consistent with CAPTA-funded federal trainings and guidance — to believe that despite their addiction, they are capable of implementing “safety plans” alongside continued use of their drug of choice. 

In a growing number of jurisdictions, CPS agencies tell doctors they do not have to report a parent or newborn’s positive drug test, while telling other community members that an active substance use disorder is not a basis for investigating whether a child has been harmed or endangered. 

Parent advocates who argue that “drug tests are not parenting tests” seem to have convinced child welfare leaders across the political spectrum that, even though it is illegal to drive a car while intoxicated, parenting under the influence should not evoke similar concerns. Even the federally funded National Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare discourages the use of drug testing to inform whether it is safe to retain young children in the home: “The punitive use of drug testing can inhibit recovery and prove harmful to families,” noting also that “drug tests can perpetuate stigma about substance use disorders.”  

These practices fall under the umbrella of harm reduction. Harm reduction is a normative framework that “centers the lived and living experience of people who use drugs” and focuses on “minimizing the negative consequences associated with substance use without requiring abstinence.” Influential groups such as the Drug Policy Alliance describe harm reduction as “simply common-sense safety,” no different than “seatbelts, bike helmets, sunscreen, or flu shots.” The Harm Reduction Coalition describes a “movement for social justice built on a belief in, and respect for, the rights of people who use drugs.”

Under this framework, we are obligated to assume that people who use drugs “know their own bodies” and “are capable of making rational choices”; the assertion that drug use poses a danger to children or that treatment must be mandated is stigmatizing and therefore counterproductive.

These harm reduction strategies focus on reducing harms to adults who use drugs, not on safeguarding children who may be endangered by parental substance use. 

Prioritizing expressed preferences of the parent to continue their drug use over the long-term health and safety of both parents and children has foreseeable consequences. In 2023 in Westchester County, New York, an early term, jittery, cocaine-positive newborn was deemed “unaffected” by substance exposure and released to her parents. Despite several subsequent calls to CPS about the parents using heroin and other drugs while caring for the child, the subsequent birth of a drug-exposed sibling, and parents’ nonparticipation in voluntary services, agency lawyers prevented caseworkers from petitioning for court intervention because there was “no impact” on the child. 

The infant girl died of drug ingestion shortly after caseworkers requested to petition the court and were denied — for the third time. The parents were charged with manslaughter. 

Some may argue that the cases of the 9-year old in Washington and this Westchester infant reflect aberrations in practice, and that taking these failures seriously will inevitably lead to unnecessary removals. Yet, statements from agency personnel rationalizing their decisions not to intervene reveal a consistent logic. 

Prior advocacy sought — reasonably — to ensure that CPS approached addiction as a chronic disease in need of treatment rather than a character flaw. Now, the message is that parents’ untreated addiction is not the business of CPS. Empowered with pieces of paper listing possible services, and legally unenforceable safety plans, parents are left to figure it out on their own. Even recent federal efforts to expand access to medication-assisted treatment may be read as a signal that getting parents to begin medication is enough — and that CPS need not remain involved — despite high rates of discontinuation, relapse, overdose and concurrent use of other illicit drugs.

No one is suggesting that a single positive drug test or instance of drug use should automatically trigger the removal of children from the home. But we must abandon the delusion that parents who are drug-addicted will enter treatment voluntarily before serious harm falls to them or their children, or have the capacity to make their addiction safe and inconsequential while parenting. Such beliefs are contradicted by the neuroscience of addiction, the massive death count of the opioid epidemic, and piles of research and personal accounts documenting what happens to children reared by parents with active drug addictions. 

Let’s be honest. The same people defending this hands-off approach would be terrified to have their own children spend five seconds in a tent full of fentanyl and strange men soliciting sex — much less live there indefinitely. This is a classic example of luxury beliefs — the privileged gain status by espousing tolerance of harmful environments and behaviors, while they and their loved ones remain fully insulated from the consequences. In the understandable desire to avoid being punitive about the struggles of drug addiction, we have perhaps forgotten that there are worse things than parents being coerced into drug treatment or experiencing a temporary separation from their child. As Pennsylvania child protection advocate Cathleen Palm observed, “There is nothing more punishing than a dead baby and a prosecuted mom.”

Emily Putnam-Hornstein is the John A. Tate Distinguished Professor for Children in Need at the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Sarah Font is a professor and researcher at the Washington University in St. Louis’ Brown School of Social Work

Source: https://imprintnews.org/opinion/how-harm-reduction-fails-families/270959

Filed under: Drug use-various effects,Harm Reduction,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Treatment and Addiction,USA :

by Shane Varcoe –  Feb 17, 2026

Every day in Australia, we lose nine people to suicide. The connection between substance use, mental health, and suicide is undeniable – trauma drives people to self-medicate, substance use deepens isolation and depression, and what starts as numbing pain can end in taking one’s life. Yet research shows us something remarkable: the vast majority of people contemplating suicide don’t actually want to die. They just want the suffering to stop. And that’s where intervention can change everything.

In this context, I spoke with Rob Nicholls and Jenny Nicholls, a couple whose personal journey through trauma and substance use has equipped them to train ordinary Australians to recognise the signs and save lives. Rob is an ASIST Trainer with Living Works, the world’s leading suicide prevention organisation, and Jenny is the author of Shattering Deception and Revealing Truth, a powerful memoir of her journey through childhood abuse, trauma, and the destructive coping mechanisms that followed.

Shattering Deceptions & Revealing Truth – Seeking a Healthy Out from Trauma – A Conversation with Suicide Preventionists

Jenny grew up in a home marked by her mother’s occult involvement, alcoholism, drug use and violence. Rob’s early years were shaped by party culture and alcohol as a social lubricant. Both understand firsthand how substance use becomes an escape from pain, how trauma creates patterns of self-medication, and how exclusion – whether through disability, mental illness, or addiction – increases suicide risk. The constant hypervigilance from Jenny’s childhood created patterns of anxiety that eventually led to her own suicide attempts.

Key Takeaways:

  • Most people thinking about suicide haven’t lost hope entirely – they’ve lost hope but hope there could be hope. That thin thread is what intervention can grab hold of.
  • Substance use and suicide share common roots – trauma, isolation, and pain drive both self-medication and self-harm. Addressing one requires addressing the other.
  • You don’t need to be an expert to save a life – Rob shares stories of barbers, neighbours, and strangers who simply noticed someone struggling and asked, “Are you okay?”
  • Desperation harnessed to hope is powerful – but desperation harnessed to hopelessness is devastating. Creating pathways to hope is essential.
  • Both the fence and the ambulance matter – prevention and intervention must work together. We can’t neglect either end of the crisis.

Shattering Deception and Revealing Truth by Jenny Nicholls shares her lived experience of childhood trauma, substance use, suicide struggles, and her journey toward healing and recovery.

Source: Shane Varcoe – Executive Director for the Dalgarno Institute

Filed under: Addiction,Australia,Culture,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Mental Health,Treatment and Addiction :

Forwarded by Maggie Petito (Drug watch International)

Article by London Telegraph – Sarah Newey –  Global health security correspondent – 17 February 2026

“Chinese triads, Mexican cartels and Australian biker gangs are all operating, even collaborating, in a “thriving criminal ecosystem” that exploits the region’s porous coastlines, weak law enforcement and widespread corruption. Yachts, narco-subs and drones have all been used across the network of air and maritime routes.”

Fiji’s spiralling health crisis is linked to an explosion in methamphetamine that threatens to turn the Pacific into a ‘semi-narco region’

Ben took his drugs ‘on the rocks’. Instead of diluting the methamphetamine with water, he’d draw blood into a syringe, dissolve the crystals, and inject himself. Sometimes it was his blood, sometimes a friend’s, and the needle was rarely new. That hardly seemed to matter.

It was 2021 and Ben, whose name has been changed, was living on the streets in Suva – Fiji’s faded seaside capital. Then 20, he’d fled his home after his father and five brothers tried to beat away his bisexuality. Crystal meth’s numbing high became an all-consuming escape from the painful memories. “I just felt like the love I was looking for was in the streets, it was not at home,” Ben, now a tall, measured 24-year-old, told the Telegraph. “I didn’t consider [safety] at all… I just continued taking [meth]. For me, when I took drugs, it transformed my mind – I was in another world altogether.”

But that world of euphoric highs and shared syringes left its mark long after Ben abandoned Suva’s shabby streets.

By late 2023, he had developed a persistent cough, his hair was falling out, and he was losing weight rapidly – dropping from a waist size 42 to just 22. When he was hospitalised with severe pneumonia, doctors diagnosed Ben with late-stage HIV, then transferred him to a ward notorious in Fiji as the place men go to die. “That’s how ill I was,” he said, sipping Coca-Cola on the seafront earlier this month. “Lying in that bed with no hope, everything seemed lost and fading.”

As recently as 2020, stories like this were relatively rare in Fiji, a former British colony best known as a paradise archipelago with pristine beaches and a vibrant culture. But now, the small Pacific nation has a grim new accolade: it is struggling to stem the world’s fastest growing HIV outbreak. “This is the ugly side of Fiji,” said Paulo, another of the five people living with HIV who spoke to the Telegraph in Suva – where children as young as 10 have contracted the virus from injecting drugs, as HIV rips through a country caught off guard.

According to data shared by the Ministry of Health, 147 people were newly diagnosed with the disease in 2020. Just four years later, that number had jumped to 1,583 – and in the first six months of 2025 alone, 1,226 cases were reported. Overall, infections have risen by 3,000 per cent since 2010.

While still a relatively small total compared to Fiji’s population – roughly 930,000 people – patchy testing means diagnosed cases are only the tip of the iceberg. And the trajectory of the outbreak looks ominous: the health department estimates that, without urgent interventions, the country could see 25,000 cases a year by 2029.

“I never thought I’d see another epidemic like this in my lifetime,” said Prof Lisa Maher, an epidemiologist at the Kirby Institute in Sydney, who worked on the HIV response in New York in the 1980s and later in southeast Asia, and is now supporting Fiji. “It came out of nowhere, because there was no data and no surveillance in place.”

‘A thriving criminal ecosystem’

The escalating crisis is linked to a boom in drugs that threatens to turn the Pacific into a “semi-narco region”, according to Associate Professor Jose Sousa-Santos, director of the Pacific Regional Security Hub at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

The region has long been a strategic stop-off point on a ‘drugs superhighway’ from the Americas and southeast Asia to Australia and New Zealand, where high demand and prices equate to lucrative profits. Yet the route’s popularity is increasing, with organised crime in the Pacific “evolving faster than any previous point in history”, according to a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Chinese triads, Mexican cartels and Australian biker gangs are all operating, even collaborating, in a “thriving criminal ecosystem” that exploits the region’s porous coastlines, weak law enforcement and widespread corruption. Yachts, narco-subs and drones have all been used across the network of air and maritime routes.

Alongside Tonga and Papua New Guinea, a key foothold is Fiji – the transport hub is dubbed the ‘gateway to the Pacific’, while four coups since 1987 have eroded democratic institutions and left them open to infiltration.

Recent seizures by the authorities, including 4.8 tonnes of crystal meth and 2.6 tonnes of cocaine, give a sense of the scale of drugs flowing through the archipelago. Police have also confirmed “wash-ups” of drug packages on outer islands – one story circulating suggests unaware locals in one remote village used the “white stuff” as washing powder after it swept ashore.

Yet the nation is no longer simply a stopover point for criminal syndicates: drugs, predominantly methamphetamines, are also spilling into a booming domestic market.

“A transit country doesn’t usually stay as a transit country,” said Megumi Hara, a regional advisor on transnational organised crime at UNODC, based in Suva. “Eventually, it also becomes a destination – and that’s what we’ve seen here.”

The Telegraph witnessed the thriving trade firsthand. As a deep orange sunset spread above Suva on a Sunday evening, two contacts (on the condition we didn’t name them or the places) took us on a “sightseeing tour” of the city’s many drug-dealer hang outs: behind a grey block of social housing, at a nondescript bus stop on a busy road, and a lush green village just outside town.

“This is one of the drug red zones in Fiji,” said one of our well-connected escorts, as the car spluttered up a steep hillside in the village, past a group of boys lurking under a palm tree. “Even the police are scared to come here… they can’t do anything because the drug lord is the landowner. His children, his brother, his brother’s son – they’re all selling drugs.”

When we paused outside a modest wooden house, a gaunt man in a hoodie immediately sauntered up to the car window – in one hand was a red burner phone, in the other six small sachets of crystal meth. The 28-year-old wasn’t there to talk – he scuttled away as soon as another car pulled up, hoping the driver of the white Toyota might make a better customer.

‘A runaway problem with meth’

The sheer volume now circulating on the archipelago is unprecedented. Although surveillance data on use remains limited, the number of cases involving meth reported by the Fiji Police Force jumped 36-fold between 2015 and 2024 – from just 10 arrests to 366.

“Fiji went from having a small number of users, to now having a runaway problem with methamphetamines,” said Prof Sousa-Santos, adding that the market was a deliberate construction.

When organised crime first operated in the Pacific, they developed a network of facilitators – usually people from commercial elites, or with links to law enforcement and government. These connections run deep – between January 2023 and October 2025, the Ministry of Policing said 27 police officers were charged with drug-related offences.

For a fee, corrupt facilitators would ensure the smooth passage of drug shipments through the country. But, as the quantity of drugs grew, criminal syndicates offered to pay in product instead of cash.

From there, local gangs emerged and became increasingly professionalised – by 2018 and 2019, the “white stuff” was not only on the streets but was starting to be sold on university campuses as “study aids”, and to elites as a sex drug. This trade only accelerated when the pandemic disrupted supply routes into and out of the country.

“If you get paid in the drugs, you have the opportunity to triple or quadruple your return,” said Prof Sousa-Santos. “But to do that, you need a local market. In Fiji, the first market that was targeted was sex workers. It grew and grew from there.”

Perched on the curbside of a dark road in east Suva as friends and customers come and go, a charismatic “drug lord” explains how this market operates on his turf.

Simon, whose name has been changed due to ongoing criminal cases, mainly sold and smoked marijuana but swapped the “green stuff” for the “white stuff” when meth started to hit the streets. The upbeat, 48-year-old reggae musician said he was dealing to “put food on the table” for his children, and make sure users had access to “high quality stuff”.

Now the market “has exploded”, Simon said, his eyes wide. Although he was vague about where he gets the meth he hawks from, there are two main distribution routes.

The first is to sell the substance to other “small-time pushers” at a wholesale price – $2,500 Fijian (£835) for seven grams. These dealers then split the meth into at least a dozen small sachets, generally containing 0.08g of crystals, which they peddle on the streets for $50 Fijian (£17) – effectively doubling their money.

Simon and his partners also employ people to work on their patch, running two four-hour shifts a night. Pushers are paid $50 per shift, during which they’d generally sell at least 14 bags of crystal meth – in Fiji, the national minimum wage is $5 per hour.

‘A bin fire became a bushfire’

But methamphetamines alone do not trigger an HIV crisis: the virus – which spreads through bodily fluids – has found fertile ground because of the way the drugs are being used. Widespread sharing of blood, needles and syringes has transformed a small, background epidemic spreading via unprotected sex into an explosive outbreak.

The shift emerged rapidly. In 2021, the country’s two main sexual health hubs in Suva and Lautoka did not report a single HIV case transmitted through drug use – by 2024, 48 per cent of new HIV infections nationally were among people injecting meth, according to UNAIDS.

“You had a lot of young people, very young people, initiating injecting with no context, no information, no awareness and no access to sterile equipment,” said the Kirby Institute’s Prof Maher, who led a Rapid Assessment on injecting drug use and HIV in Suva, commissioned by the UN and published last year. “A bin fire has become a bushfire.”

While sleeping rough on the seafront in 2021 and again in 2023, Ben engaged in many of the risky drug practices that fueled this “bushfire” – sometimes motivated by intrigue, sometimes culture, and sometimes necessity.

One trend at the time was “bluetoothing”, he said, where friends pooled money to buy a single bag of meth, before one person injected the drug. Once they were high, another person drew blood from the initial user and injected themselves, chasing a secondary rush from the traces of meth in the bloodstream. But while a cost-saving (and headline grabbing) concept, bluetoothing is now uncommon as users found it rarely worked.

Instead, some people have reported using blood, rather than water, as the solvent to dissolve methamphetamine. This involves inserting the needle into a vein and repeatedly “flushing” the plunger back and forth to draw enough blood into the syringe to dilute the crystals, before injecting the entire mixture.

“It gives a stronger high… it gives us a lot of energy,” said Ben, explaining the appeal. He still called this practice “bluetoothing”, but most drug users who spoke to the Telegraph and the Rapid Assessment team referred to the approach as “on the rocks”, “dry” or “koda” – a Fijian word which translates to “raw”, and a nod to a traditional raw fish dish called kokoda.

The rampant HIV transmission has also been driven by sharing of mixing paraphernalia – for instance, using the same bottle caps or mugs to dissolve the meth in water – as well as needles and syringes. In that instance, scarcity has partly been caused by a police crackdown based on a misinterpretation of the law.

“The police started coming down hard on pharmacies for selling needles and syringes to anyone wanting one,” said Renata Ram, the Pacific HIV adviser at UNAIDS in Fiji. “That’s when [the HIV] caseload started increasing as well, in late 2021 and 2022.

“If you really want a hit, you’ll find a way to get it – sharing needles was people’s only option,” she said, adding that selling sterile equipment was never actually illegal. “We’ve heard people saying they would share needles about 15 times, or use the same one 15 times.”

She added that stigma is high but knowledge around HIV is low, with a “whole generation” unaware of transmission risks. Some do not know that treatment exists, so see no reason to test, others diagnosed shun anti-retrovirals in favour of traditional Fijian medicines or prayer.

Meri – who, like Ben, asked for her name to be changed because of pervasive stigma in the conservative country – has seen the human cost of the syringe shortage more clearly than most. Within four months last year, she buried three of her closest friends; they were only 33, 42 and 44.

The group started buying methamphetamines just after the pandemic, when they were living on the streets in Lautoka – a city some 120 miles from the capital, on the western side of Fiji’s largest island.

Meri had long been a marijuana smoker, but had never tried the “white stuff” before. Soon the 55-year-old was hooked – she loved “the brightness” and besides, staying awake was useful for long shifts selling cigarettes (some nickname the meth here “mileage”, as it keeps you up for days). But the friends were rarely able to buy sterile equipment – while drugs were everywhere, clean needles and syringes were a luxury.

“They were hard to find, so nearly every time we just shared,” said Meri, sitting cross-legged on a woven mat in a small courtyard at the Survival Advocacy Network (SAN) in Suva. “We washed them, but sharing was kind of [a] necessity.”

Sesenieli Naitala, the founder of SAN, said sharing is also common as it’s hardwired into Fijian life through the custom of “kerekere”, which obliges people to share resources with close friends and relatives. People frequently pass a single cigarette or marijuana joint around a group, while kava – a traditional psychoactive drink – is shared in a single cup.

But in February 2024, Meri tested positive for HIV. She was scared and blamed herself, although she didn’t want to show it – Meri, who wears a cap over her bleach blond pixie cut, attempts an air of nonchalance. She immediately phoned her friends, who still lived on the streets – none of them had considered the risk of blood-borne infections until then.

By the time they were tested, the virus had progressed to Aids. They received treatment, but didn’t stop taking drugs or drinking alcohol and gradually their immune systems faltered. Meri said a final goodbye to two of them in July, and one in October.

“[When I buried them] I was thinking about myself, that I had to change and just leave it behind for good. Because I know if I [keep using] too… it’ll be the same as what my friends went through,” she said softly. “It’s a hard thing to stop [taking meth]… but I had to think of my life.”

‘The epidemic changed, the response did not’

It is now more than a year since the Ministry of Health declared a national HIV outbreak and set up a dedicated taskforce to respond, putting Dr Jason Mitchell, a Fijian doctor who’s worked on HIV across southeast Asia and the Pacific, at the helm.

“The way I describe what’s happened here in Fiji is that the epidemic changed, but programming in response to the epidemic did not,” he said. “So our responsibility here in this unit… is to set up an appropriate response for the new epidemic we’re facing.”

The government unlocked $10 million Fijian (£3m) to do so – up from a budget of $200,000 a year – while international support has ramped up, including £1.7m from New Zealand and £2.6m from Australia, who have also invested £25m in a broader Pacific-wide programme. These countries are also supporting law enforcement operations to counter the flow of drugs into Fiji.

But with key elements of the health response beset by delays, critics say the glacial pace is only giving the virus more time to spread, amplifying the “tsunami of infections” they fear is on the horizon. There are also concerns that punitive attitudes and moral framing of drug use is a continued barrier.

There is still no needle and syringe exchange programme, no pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) available, and no rehab centre. There are also major gaps in testing and treatment. UNAIDS estimates that just 36 per cent of people living with HIV in Fiji were aware of their status in 2024, and only 24 per cent were taking antiretrovirals (there have also been sporadic stockouts of the treatment).

Meanwhile the virus is seeping into new groups: in the first half of 2025, 33 babies were born with HIV, signalling broader weaknesses in the health system.

Dr Mitchell conceded that progress has been slower than hoped, and is clearly frustrated by elements of government bureaucracy.

“The outbreak is so large now that it has the potential to impact the country as a whole, the economy and all of the industries that we rely on – such as tourism, which [is where] 40 per cent of our GDP comes from,” the 47-year-old said animatedly, warning there are also signs HIV is starting to spread to other Pacific island nations.

“So it is an emergency. The most frustrating thing is [that] during Covid… things just happened overnight, approvals just happened, finances just flowed, all of that was fast tracked. That has not happened for the HIV response… Why? It’s a question I can’t actually answer.”

But despite red tape, Dr Mitchell stressed there has been major progress behind the scenes to re-build the capacity, expertise and systems needed to respond (while Fiji once had a robust programme to keep HIV at bay, it was gradually sidelined as cases remained low, new health threats emerged and donor funding for HIV was diverted elsewhere).

He is also optimistic that the much needed needle and syringe programme will launch in the second quarter of the year, once the supplies arrive in March, and hopes PrEP will become available for high risk groups within six months.

In the meantime, 11 new HIV care teams have been established at hospitals across the country, free condom pick-up points have been rolled out, and peer-to-peer education programmes are targeting those most at-risk – including the Angels Collective, a group of drug users who are hitting the streets to teach others about safe injecting practices and HIV.

‘We don’t know what Fiji’s future holds’

For Dr Kesaia Tuidraki, director of Medical Services Pacific, some of the most important programmes are those taking services directly to communities at risk – whether that’s in the Suva’s suburbs or a remote island three days away by boat, where cases are also emerging.

“If you want to reach people you have to go to where they are, because accessibility has always been an issue,” she said, in an office overlooking the capital’s busy port at the NGO’s modest hillside clinic. “Economical issues, unemployment, challenging backgrounds, geographic isolation, stigma – all these things are stopping people from coming forward.

“This means we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg, there are a lot more [cases] going unnoticed,” she said, adding that many people only test positive once their infection has deteriorated into Aids. According to government data, more than half of the people who died of HIV-related causes in 2024 found out their status the same year.

And so, as evening rush hour traffic eased, a bus kitted out as a mobile clinic set off to a housing project in the densely populated Suva-Nausori corridor. This is the Moonlight programme, which is trying to stem the glaring testing gap that’s hindering the response.

Within half an hour of arriving, a long queue has formed and HIV, hepatitis and syphilis screening gets underway. Outside the bus, health care workers under a bright hanging torch ask preliminary questions, then prick people’s index fingers and transfer the blood to a rapid test. Some 15 minutes later, results are delivered in private inside the compact mobile clinic.

“Well, we caught some tigers,” Vilisi Uluinaceva, the nurse practitioner, said at the end of a long night. Two of 50 tests came back positive – samples will now be sent to the hospital lab for confirmation, and the patients referred to the main clinic for treatment.

That number is lower than previous screenings – at one, mainly among sex workers, 19 of 25 tests came back positive. But the team is pleased so many young people turned up, as cases in this group are surging: in the first half of 2025 alone, 174 children and teenagers aged between five and 19 were diagnosed nationally. Mrs Uluinaceva has treated patients as young as 13.

“We just have to create more awareness on this issue, because if all these children are going to have HIV, there’ll be no future for Fiji,” she said, holding back tears. “Of course I worry and sometimes I’m really emotional – we just don’t know what the future holds.”

But for Ben, the future finally feels exciting again – he’s found a job and a flat share, and is considering re-enrolling at university. It’s a far cry from the weeks after his diagnosis, when the loneliness felt crushing and thoughts of suicide dominated his mind.

“I have come to understand that HIV is just a sickness like any other,” he said, adding that he has been taking antiretroviral treatment for more than 18 months. “We can all be diagnosed with different illnesses, but what matters is how we accept our condition and maintain a positive mindset.”

Walking through the shallow waters less than two miles from the seawall where he used to sleep rough, Ben also shared uplifting news: last week he found out that, for the first time, his HIV viral load is so low it’s undetectable, thanks to the anti-retrovirals. It doesn’t mean the virus has gone, but it means Ben’s condition is stable and he can no longer pass HIV onto someone else. “Here I am today, just living my life like any other normal person,” he said, beaming.

Source: Maggie Petito – Drug watch International

__

Filed under: Addiction,Crime/Violence/Prison,Culture,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Methamphetamine/GHB/Hallucinogens/Oxycodone,Treatment and Addiction,UK :
News Release 

by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Key points:

  • Broad spiritual practices, ranging from attending religious services to meditation to prayer, were associated with a 13% reduced risk of hazardous drug and alcohol use, according to a meta-analysis. The greatest reduction (18%) was seen among individuals attending religious services at least once per week.
  • The meta-analysis is the first of its kind to synthesize and comprehensively estimate how dangerous substance use is impacted over time by spirituality.
  • According to the researchers, the findings carry potential for individuals who find spirituality important in other aspects of their lives to also use it as a resource in their relationship with drugs and alcohol. Clinicians and communities can also use these findings to consider broader strategies for addiction prevention and care.

Boston, MA—Individuals who engaged in spirituality were significantly less likely to exhibit hazardous use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and illicit drugs, according to a new meta-analysis led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The meta-analysis is the first of its kind to synthesize and comprehensively estimate associations between harmful or hazardous substance use and spirituality—considered any practice, religious or otherwise, through which an individual finds ultimate meaning, purpose, and connection to something greater than themselves. 

“Our findings indicate that spirituality may be protective against substance misuse, one of the biggest public health challenges of our time,” said lead author Howard Koh, Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership. “For many individuals and families, using spirituality as a resource—whether that be attending religious services, meditating, praying, or seeking others forms of spiritual comfort—may be an avenue to enhance their health.”

The study will be published Feb. 18, 2026, in JAMA Psychiatry.

Of more than 20,000 spirituality and health studies published in the 21st century (2000-2022), the researchers identified 55 that fit their criteria for rigor, including large cohorts and longitudinal design. They analyzed the results of these studies, which collectively followed more than half a million people over time, to understand the overall relationship between spirituality and alcohol and drug use.

The meta-analysis found that broad spiritual practices, including spiritual and religious community involvement, attending religious services, meditation, and prayer, reduced individuals’ risk of dangerous alcohol and drug use by 13%. This reduction was greater (18%) among individuals attending religious services at least once per week. The results were consistent across all of the drug categories studied (alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and illicit drugs).

“Meta-analyses of such longitudinal studies on spirituality and health are rare. This is a sort of once-in-a-decade advance,” said senior author Tyler VanderWeele, John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology. “The consistency of the results across all the studies was striking, with all but a few—including over a dozen studies conducted outside of the U.S.—showing a protective, not detrimental, effect.” 

According to the researchers, the findings carry potential not just for individuals, but also for clinicians caring for patients at risk of or struggling with substance misuse and communities working to address substance misuse epidemics.

For example, the researchers wrote that clinicians could ask patients about the role of spirituality in their lives and prompt those who find it important to consider spiritual practices or community participation. Moreover, public health organizations and spiritual or religious communities could join forces to provide more resources and opportunities that help address the factors often driving substance misuse, such as stress, loneliness, and loss of meaning.

Article information

“Spirituality and harmful or hazardous alcohol and other drug use: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies,” Howard K. Koh, Donald E. Frederick, Tracy A. Balboni, Samantha M. O’Reilly, John F. Kelly, Keith Humphreys, Michael Botticelli, Maya B. Mathur, Constantine S. Psimopoulos, Katelyn N.G. Long, Tyler J. VanderWeele, JAMA Psychiatry, February 18, 2025, doi: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2025.4816

The study was supported by the Templeton Religion Trust (grant 2022-30967) and the Lee Family Fund.

Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1116640

Filed under: Alcohol,Culture,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Treatment and Addiction,USA :

MILAN, Feb. 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/

The Foundation for a Drug-Free World surpassed the milestone of 1,000,000 The Truth About Drugs booklets distributed across Italy during the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics to help combat drug abuse.

While society often seeks a quick fix in a pill, the world of professional athletes is different. “We should all be drug-free, especially in sports where it’s definitely dangerous to take drugs,” says a Belgian Olympian at Milano Cortina 2026 to a Drug-Free World volunteer. “Whatever you put your mind to, you can always make it,” he adds. “We do that best by being active every day.”

In 2025, reports found that one in four Gen Z Italians admitted to getting high regularly, while over 160,000 students aged 15 to 19 had used at least two illegal drugs. “These numbers are too high,” says Jessica Hochman, Executive Director of the Foundation for a Drug-Free World. “The best way to reduce them is through head-on prevention with real facts that make you give it serious thought before deciding to take a hit of a joint or snort cocaine at a party.”

And head-on, they did. While athletes broke records in alpine skiing, figure skating, luge and speed skating, the Foundation for a Drug-Free World scored big by distributing 1,000,000 The Truth About Drugs booklets across Italy in just a few weeks. Since January, over 400 volunteers saturated Italy’s boot with educational materials that explain what drugs are–without sugarcoating.

“They tell you that edibles are so concentrated with THC that they can lead you to paranoia, anxiety and sometimes psychotic episodes,” says Hochman. “They tell you that cocaine is one of the most dangerous drugs, capable of causing such addiction that someone might do anything to get it, even commit violent crimes.”

By giving the cold, raw facts, young people will think twice before experimenting with drugs.

“The most important part is knowledge and how bad it could be for your body,” says the Olympian. “I don’t think we learn about it enough in school. So we need other ways to get the information to children.”

Volunteers visited over 4,000 shops, providing boxes of The Truth About Drugs booklets to distribute to customers. Some shop owners, aware of the drug situation among youth, found hope that change is possible when they took booklets for their patrons.

“To all the kids out there, I think dreaming big is the first thing you should always keep in mind,” says the Olympian. “Eventually, you can maybe make it to your big dream like the Olympics. The best way to do that is by putting in the work and not by using any other ways to get there.”

The Foundation for a Drug-Free World is the largest nongovernmental drug education and prevention organization. Through a worldwide network of volunteers, millions of drug prevention booklets and educational materials have been distributed in over 180 countries. Thanks to the support of the Church of Scientology, these materials are made available free of charge to anyone wishing to take action to address the drug issue that affects everyone. For more information, visit www.drugfreeworld.org.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/foundation-for-a-drug-free-world-goes-for-the-gold-against-drugs-at-winter-olympics-302693258.html

SOURCE: Foundation for a Drug-Free World

Filed under: Latest News,Others (International News),Strategy and Policy :

This brochure was published by the City of Göteborg 

Source: Working together for a drug-free society SRF_Broschyr(SWEDEN) January 2009

Filed under: Latest News,Legal Sector,Prevention and Intervention :

INTRODUCTION

The present report reviews the evolution of the drug control policy in Sweden, one of the most widely examined and debated drug control policies in the world.

The Swedish drug control policy is guided by the vision and the ultimate goal of achieving a drugfree society and the unequivocal rejection of drugs, their trafficking and abuse is considered somewhat unique. This is particularly so when the drug policy in Sweden is compared to drug control policies in other countries of the European Union. Over the years, the drug control policy in Sweden has been subject to scrutiny numerous times, either at the national level, mostly by expert Commissions established specifically for that purpose, or by scientific researchers both in Sweden and internationally.

As part of its ongoing series on drug control policies at local and national level, UNODC has decided to review the Swedish drug control policy that has evolved over the past forty years. It is a rapid assessment, based on open-source documents, supplemented by Government documents and information obtained from Government officials. While the report does not aim to be comprehensive or exhaustive, an attempt has been made to thoroughly review the available evidence, including data on drug abuse, dating back to the 1940s.

The document examines important junctures in Swedish drug control policy, including the often discussed Stockholm experiment of drug prescription, the introduction of methadone maintenance programmes and, of course, the vision of a drug-free society. An analysis of the drug control situation in Sweden over the years accompanies the document and shows how the drug control situation has evolved over time.

It is difficult to establish a direct and causal relationship between specific policy measures and the resulting drug situation. Nevertheless, in the case of Sweden, the clear association between a restrictive drug policy and low levels of drug use is striking. Few people in Sweden are likely to take drugs in their lifetime, and even less likely to use drugs regularly. Attitudes towards drugs and their abuse is clearly negative. Preliminary calculations for the UNODC Illicit Drug Index, a single measure of a country’s overall drug problem, show a very low value for Sweden which indicates that its drug problem is small, compared to that of other States. However, the relatively high proportion of heavy drug use among drug abusers remains a concern that has been difficult to address. This document cannot provide definite answers to questions about how the levels of drug abuse are influenced by policy measures. It can only present the facts and leave the readers to draw their own conclusions.

Source: https://www.unodc.org/pdf/research/Swedish_drug_control.pdf February 2007

Filed under: Europe,Latest News,Political Sector,Prevention and Intervention :

Abstract

In 2017 Iceland received word-wide attention for having dramatically reversed the course of teenage substance use. From 1998 to 2018, the percentage of 15-16-year-old Icelandic youth who were drunk in the past 30 days declined from 42% to 5%; daily cigarette smoking dropped from 23% to 3%; and having used cannabis one or more times fell from 17% to 5%. The core elements of the model are: 1) long-term commitment by local communities; 2) emphasis on environmental rather than individual change; 3) perception of adolescents as social attributes. This presentation describes how the Iceland prevention model is built upon collaboration between policy makers, researchers, parent organizations, and youth practitioners. These groups have created a system whereby youth receive the necessary guidance and support to live fun and productive lives without reliance on psychoactive substances. The Model is being replicated in 35 municipalities within 17 countries around the globe. The Icelandic Model: Evidence Based Primary Prevention – 20 Years of Successful Primary Prevention Work was featured for the past two years at the Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on the World Drug Problem.

Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330347576_Perspective_Iceland_Succeeds_at_Preventing_Teenage_Substance_Use February 2019

Filed under: Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Youth :

Sir,

The article by Sophie Christie (Telegraph Business 22 June ) could be read as a paean for Cannabis based medications and CBD particularly.

While we have long suspected and said, that CBD in particular may well have clinical uses,  that is with caution.

Evidence for the epigenetic and teratogenic effects of cannabis can easily be found via Google Scholar.

The NHS Wales lists the risk for Gastroschisis (babies with large intestines outside their bodies). Cannabis and Cocaine are both suspect.

There has been a gastroschisis outbreak in South Wales.

CBD is not off the hook, therefore self-medication and mass marketing of it and products containing it, may not be a good idea.

As long ago as 1973 Professor Gabriel Nahas MD, PhD, DSc of Columbia University gave evidence to a Senate Committee  that, in vitro at least, molecules of the cannabinoids CBD and CBN, were, like THC, potent inhibitors of DNA production.

There seems to be a danger of CBD being oversold in the rush to market.

The last Teratogen that was marketed extensively was Thalidomide, we all know how that turned out.

The pharmaceutical regulation system, in a 1st world nation like the UK, is onerous for very good reason.

We should trust that system , not seek to by-pass it

David Raynes

National Drug Prevention Alliance

Slough.

Source: Email from David to dtletters@telegraph.co.uk June 2018

Filed under: Cannabis/Marijuana,Drug use-various effects on foetus, babies, children and youth,Genes,Health,Latest News,Marijuana and Medicine :

The U.S. government recently released updated Dietary Guidelines for Americans that include new advice about alcohol. These changes are part of health advice that the government updates every five years, with the newest version released in early 2026.

 

What the New Guidelines Say

 In past years, the U.S. said that women could have up to one drink per day and men could have up to two drinks per day if they chose to drink alcohol. But the new guidelines removed those specific daily limits. Now, the main message is that people should “consume less alcohol for overall better health.” There’s no fixed number of drinks in the new advice.

The change doesn’t mean alcohol is “healthy.” It’s simply because the government no longer lists a safe number of drinks per day. Instead, it focuses on general moderation and a healthy diet that includes better food choices.

 

Why Healthcare Providers Are Worried

 Not all health experts agree with this change. Many doctors and public health groups are concerned for several reasons:

  • Lack of clear limits. Without specific numbers, some people might think it’s okay to drink more than before. This could lead to more health problems.
  • Alcohol and health risks. Many studies show that even small amounts of alcohol can increase the risk of cancer, liver disease, heart problems, and injuries. Research suggests drinking carries risk from the first drink and the risk goes up with more alcohol use.1
  • Scientists wanted stronger warnings. Public health experts have recommended clearer messages, including possibly warning labels on alcohol that say alcohol causes cancer, similar to tobacco warnings.2

Some healthcare providers also worry that the changes were influenced more by the alcohol industry than by science, which could weaken the health message.

As a comparison, Canadian health authorities have shared a risk-based system that tells people how health risks change with how much alcohol they drink:3

  • 0 drinks per week — safest for health
  • Up to 2 drinks per week — lowest risk of harm
  • 3–6 drinks per week — risk goes up more
  • 7 or more drinks per week — risk of serious problems goes up a lot
  • More than 2 drinks at one time increases risk of injury, violence, or accidents
  • No alcohol is safest during pregnancy or breastfeeding

This shows a clear scale of risk — from no drinking at all to higher risk — so people can see how their drinking might affect their health.

In the U.S., the removal of drink-specific targets leaves American adults without clear numbers to guide their daily drinking choices. Some healthcare professionals find this to be less helpful for preventing harm.

 

What This Means for You and Your Family

 If you choose to drink alcohol, these guidelines mean it’s important to:

  • Understand that any amount of drinking carries some risk.
  • Keep any alcohol locked up to help prevent underage drinking.
  • Talk with a doctor if you have questions about drinking and your health.

In other words, health experts still agree that drinking less is better for your health — even if the exact wording and approach are changing. Learn more about alcohol, its relationship to cancer and other health risks, and how to reduce the harms around drinking in our Alcohol Resource Center.

SOURCE: https://drugfree.org/article/new-u-s-alcohol-guidelines-2025-2030-why-some-doctors-are-concerned/

Filed under: Alcohol,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Treatment and Addiction,USA :

by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) – 28 January 2026

The ACMD has advised the government ketamine should remain a class B controlled substance, but that police forces and health care professionals must receive greater support to better identify, prevent and respond to ketamine‑related harms.

In January 2025, the government asked the ACMD to review the prevalence and harms of the misuse of ketamine. After examining the latest evidence, engaging with people with lived or living experience with the substance, consulting stakeholders, and reviewing academic research, the ACMD concluded ketamine should not be reclassified and should remain in class B.

Findings and decisions

In reaching its decision, the ACMD noted that the acute harms of ketamine – such as toxicity and deaths – align with its current class B status.

The ACMD also expressed concern about the growing use of high‑dose ketamine – described in some cases as “chronic”- and the long‑term harms associated with it.

However, as these harms were established in the 2013 ketamine assessment, the group focused its discussions on identifying new and emerging risks.

The ACMD report highlighted that many acute harms experienced by ketamine users are likely to be significantly influenced by using other drugs at the same time, and that reclassifying ketamine in isolation would unlikely reduce prevalence or misuse.

Individuals with personal experience of ketamine use and harms who contributed to the review said they did not believe upgrading ketamine to class A would reduce its use. Health and social care professionals similarly, largely, voiced opposition to reclassification.

Ultimately, the ACMD concluded that a public health‑centred approach is essential for reducing ketamine-related harms. This approach requires co-ordinated action across public bodies, health services, and community organisations.

The ACMD Chair Professor David Wood said in relation to the report:

The ACMD report highlights the need for a ‘whole system approach’ through its recommendations to tackle issues related to ketamine use, as no single recommendation is sufficient to do this alone.

Recommendations  

The ACMD’s recommendations are outlined in full in their report. This includes recommendations on classification, improving treatment of ketamine-related harms, international control, intelligence gathering, education and training, harm reduction and research.

Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/acmd-announces-decision-on-the-classification-of-ketamine

Filed under: Addiction,Drug use-various effects,Ketamine,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Treatment and Addiction,UK :

by Jan Hoffman, NY Times – 15.12.2025

Medetomidine, a veterinary sedative, mixed into fentanyl has sent thousands to hospitals, not only for overdose but for life-threatening withdrawal. It is spreading to other cities.

Joseph is newly in recovery from fentanyl mixed with medetomidine, a veterinary sedative. Philadelphia’s hospitals are strained by cases of medetomidine withdrawal, which have life-threatening symptoms.

Around 2 a.m., Joseph felt the withdrawal coming on, sudden and hard. He fell to the floor convulsing, vomiting ferociously. The delirium and hallucinations were starting.

He shook awake his friend, who had let him in earlier to shower, wash his clothes and grab some sleep. “Do you have a few dollars?” he pleaded. “I have to get right.”

The friend, a community outreach worker who had been trying for years to get him into treatment, looked up at him standing over her raving and unfocused.

“Either leave or let me call an ambulance,” she demanded.

At 34, Joseph (who, with his friend, recounted the evening in interviews with The New York Times) had been through opioid withdrawals many times — on Philadelphia streets, in jail, in rehab. But he had never experienced anything as terrifyingly all-consuming as this.

A new drug has been saturating the fentanyl supply in Philadelphia and moving to other cities throughout the East and Midwestern United States: medetomidine, a powerful veterinary sedative that causes almost instantaneous blackouts and, if not used every few hours, brings on life-threatening withdrawal symptoms.

It has created a new type of drug crisis — one that is occasioned not by overdosing on the drug, but by withdrawing from it.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/15/health/medetomidine-withdrawal-symptoms-treatment.html?

Filed under: Addiction,Culture,Drug use-various effects,Harm Reduction,Latest News,Opioids,Prevention and Intervention,Treatment and Addiction,USA :

By Corinne Boyer – Montreal City News – January 25, 2026 

A new remote service has launched in Quebec to help prevent drug overdoses, offering callers access to counselors by phone or video in a province grappling with rising overdose deaths.

Quebec’s overdose crisis has reached alarming levels. A report from the province’s institute for public health shows there were 645 drug overdose deaths in 2024 alone, with projections for 2025 expected to exceed 600.

Drugs: Help and Referral recently introduced the Remote Service for Overdose Prevention (RSOP) to provide immediate support for those at risk.

“In Canada, we’ve seen a decrease of overdoses, in Quebec, we’ve seen the opposite!” said David Galipeau, assistant coordinator at RSOP.

RSOP counselors follow a structured approach, explaining rules to callers, obtaining consent to contact emergency services if necessary, assessing overdose risk, providing wellness checks when there’s no immediate danger, and deleting personal information once the call ends to maintain anonymity.

“Here is really a support,” said Galipeau. “So the person could just use substances completely in silence and will just be there and monitor and see if the person is still well and then punctually just check up on the person. We stay on the phone throughout the entire time. But sometimes, the person just wants to talk about what they’re feeling. Sometimes, it can bring out some emotions and stuff like that. Then we can intervene and we can support those types of cases. But the person can choose the level of which, the support that they get from our team.”

Counselors emphasize that the service is not about stopping drug use but preventing fatal overdoses.

“We’re not there to tell them what to do, we’re not there to stop them from using the drug, we’re not asking them to stop, we’re just asking them to do it with someone, to not do it alone,” said Karelle Chevrier, addiction counselor at RSOP.

Officials note that most overdose-related deaths in Quebec occur when people use drugs alone at home, which significantly increases the risk of a fatal outcome.

“Drug usage in general is very stigmatized in society, and some people, due to that stigmatization and self-stigmatization as well, experience loneliness,” said Galipeau. “It leads them to use substances alone in their house or elsewhere in the city in secluded areas.”

“The danger when we do it alone is so high and we just don’t want people to die basically so just call us to do it with us and we won’t judge you,” added Chevrier. “We’ll be there for you and we’re not going to tell you what to do.”

After the pilot project launched in June 2025 proved successful, RSOP has grown to nearly 30 employees handling 120 to 160 calls a day, with recent spikes reaching 200 daily calls.

“Frequency is slowly going up but it’s more the number of different people that is becoming bigger faster and also we did lose some of our callers because they ended up going to our other program so they used with us and then they stopped using and now they moved on to the regular line where they can talk about how they want to keep sober and they want to stay sober and they want to go to therapy,” said Chevrier.

The service is free, confidential, bilingual, and available seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. Callers can connect with an RSOP counselor by contacting Drugs: Help and Referral at 1-800-265-2626 and choosing option 2.

Source: https://montreal.citynews.ca/2026/01/25/quebec-launches-remote-service-drug-overdoses/

Filed under: Addiction,Canada,Drug use-various effects,Harm Reduction,Latest News,Opioids,Prevention and Intervention,Treatment and Addiction :

Forwarded by Maggie Petito – Dec 31 2025

The following are two articles forwarded by Maggie Petito of Drug Watch International. The first article touches on recruiting young ones as assassins for the rackets/cartels. The second article says: “SFS applauds the Trump Administration for taking this step and encourages it to go further, by expanding the list of individuals and entities working in both countries and broadening it to China and Russia which are also working with Iran to prop up the Maduro regime and weaken the U.S. in the region.”

First article sent by Maggie Petito:

– – The Financial Times – Barney Jopson: “Criminal drug gangs have become a grave threat to European security by flooding the streets with South American cocaine, seeking to corrupt officials and hiring a new wave of paid assassins, according to the EU’s drugs agency. Due to financial crises, terrorism, Covid-19 and the Ukraine war, European policymakers had not paid enough attention to the criminal organisations that had built sprawling drugs businesses, said Alexis Goosdeel, outgoing director of the EU Drugs Agency (EUDA). Now, Europe was belatedly waking up to the “hyper-availability” of illegal drugs and to traffickers’ pervasive attempts to intimidate and corrupt officials in ports, police forces and the judiciary, Goosdeel added. `We discovered the tip of the iceberg and we have not seen what is under the surface,’ he told the Financial Times at the end of his 10-year term as head of the Lisbon-based EUDA. `I think for the moment it’s not even possible to imagine the dimensions.’ This year has served up stark examples. A police union in southern Spain said the state had `lost control’ of the fight against traffickers. A judge said Belgium was at risk of becoming a `narco-state.’ And the killing of an anti-drug activist’s brother in Marseille heightened fears that France was heading the same way. Alexis Goosdeel: ‘Assassination as a service involves young people who are recruited using social media’ Goosdeel warned that the trade in illicit drugs posed a `multidimensional’ menace to Europe, extending from lethal violence to institutional corruption. `The threat today is very high,’ he said.  This month, the European Commission unveiled a new narcotics action plan, calling drug trafficking a `major threat to Europeans’ wellbeing’ that demanded a `stronger, co-ordinated response across the EU…’ Goosdeel said there has been an “encouraging” increase in European criminals finally being extradited from their sanctuaries in Dubai, which remains home to notorious figures including Daniel Kinahan, the Irish boss of the Kinahan organised crime group.”

Second article sent by Maggie Petito:

Drug gangs pose grave threat to European security, agency warns

Scale of Europe’s narcotics crisis ‘not even possible to imagine’, says EUDA director Alexis Goosdeel

The Financial Times    Barney Jopson in Madrid  12-31-25

Criminal drug gangs have become a grave threat to European security by flooding the streets with South American cocaine, seeking to corrupt officials and hiring a new wave of paid assassins, according to the EU’s drugs agency. Due to financial crises, terrorism, Covid-19 and the Ukraine war, European policymakers had not paid enough attention to the criminal organisations that had built sprawling drugs businesses, said Alexis Goosdeel, outgoing director of the EU Drugs Agency (EUDA). Now, Europe was belatedly waking up to the “hyper-availability” of illegal drugs and to traffickers’ pervasive attempts to intimidate and corrupt officials in ports, police forces and the judiciary, Goosdeel added. “We discovered the tip of the iceberg and we have not seen what is under the surface,” he told the Financial Times at the end of his 10-year term as head of the Lisbon-based EUDA. “I think for the moment it’s not even possible to imagine the dimensions.” This year has served up stark examples. A police union in southern Spain said the state had “lost control” of the fight against traffickers. A judge said Belgium was at risk of becoming a “narco-state”.

 And the killing of an anti-drug activist’s brother in Marseille heightened fears that France was heading the same way. Alexis Goosdeel: ‘Assassination as a service involves young people who are recruited using social media’ Goosdeel warned that the trade in illicit drugs posed a “multidimensional” menace to Europe, extending from lethal violence to institutional corruption. “The threat today is very high,” he said.

This month, the European Commission unveiled a new narcotics action plan, calling drug trafficking a “major threat to Europeans’ wellbeing” that demanded a “stronger, co-ordinated response across the EU”. The biggest recent change has been a surge in the production and trafficking of cocaine, mainly from Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, Goosdeel said. “For the last six, seven years we have seen a really exponential increase in the availability of cocaine on the European market, with stable prices, a very high level of purity,” he said. As a result, “there is pressure from the producers to find new customers or to make customers use more”, creating sharper competition between rival drug organisations. Europe is also experiencing a rise of “crime as a service”, including hired assassins to take out rivals and contractors who can set up industrial-scale amphetamine labs. “Assassination as a service involves young people who are recruited using social media,” Goosdeel said. “They are brought to another country to commit a crime, then they are brought back.” Goosdeel said it was not possible to know how US President Donald Trump’s recent strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug trafficking boats would affect Europe “because there is no documentation” and “there were no legal cases brought against those people and those boats”. The ubiquity of drugs in Europe is linked in part to large-scale trafficking via commercial shipping containers, an import route that was far less common 10 years ago, he said. Ports are joining forces to fight trafficking. Some, such as Antwerp, have introduced stricter controls on dockers, including biometric IDs and preset timeframes for access to containers and cranes. But Goosdeel said that had prompted criminal gangs to shift their attention to managers who control container movements. “Criminal organisations will not easily renounce corruption. Corruption is a way for them to reach their objectives,” he said. “They try at every level.” But Goosdeel said there has been an “encouraging” increase in European criminals finally being extradited from their sanctuaries in Dubai, which remains home to notorious figures including Daniel Kinahan, the Irish boss of the Kinahan organised crime group. He argued that governments must go beyond enforcement to address why demand for dangerous substances — both illicit drugs and misused medicines — was rising. “Using substances at different moments in our life or in the day to cope with anxiety, with difficulties or to improve our performance is much more widespread than it was 10 or 20 years ago,” he said. He linked the change to socio-economic pressures, such as the struggles of young people to find a job or afford a home, together with anxiety over Covid and the Ukraine war. “We need to understand that the fact that we have more users doesn’t mean that they are all criminals or all addicts,” Goosdeel said. A new approach would involve more investment in harm reduction, plus new treatment protocols for drug dependence, especially on cocaine. But he said it should also encompass the root causes of drug abuse, even as countries across Europe are pressured to spend less on social welfare and more on defence. “We are at a moment where it’s really time to find a way to reinvest in living together,” he said.

Source: www.drugwatch.org

Filed under: Crime/Violence/Prison,Culture,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,USA,Youth :

As 30 Days of Drug Facts comes to an end this December, we encourage you to take time to learn about drugs. When you know the risks and effects, you can prevent misuse, avoid harmful interactions, and recognize warning signs early to help those in need.

Accurate information also protects against the danger of hearing incorrect information from your peers or through social media. Education strengthens both you and your community’s safety by lowering crime and health issues linked to drug abuse.

DEA.gov offers many drug fact sheets where you can find descriptions of a drug’s effects on the body and mind, history, legal status, and other key facts. Remember, you play a vital role in educating your friends, family, and colleagues on how to make healthy, informed decisions. Learn more today.

To access the full document:

  1. Click on the ‘Source’ link below.
  2. An image of the front page of the full document will appear.
  3. Click on the image to open the full document.

Source: https://www.dea.gov/factsheets?Utm_campaign=20251230_30days&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery

Filed under: Drug use-various effects,Latest News,USA :

Published by Michigan State University College of Human Medicine:

Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. (2025). At least 1 in 6 pregnant Michigan women uses cannabis. MSUToday. https://humanmedicine.msu.edu/news/2025-at-least-1-in-6-pregnant-michigan-women-uses-cannabis.html

Marijuana use among pregnant women has exponentially increased over the last 20 years. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), pregnant women, especially those from high-income countries like the United States, have reported use ranging from 3.9% to 22.6%. This change in the landscape of substance use is observed in states like Michigan where both medical and recreational marijuana are legal. As access expands and perception shifts, researchers are racing to understand the number of pregnant women using marijuana and what factors shape that decision.

A recent study from the University of Michigan analyzed data of self-reported marijuana use and urine toxicology testing from 1,100 mothers in Michigan between 2017 and 2023, finding that 1 in 6 pregnant mothers used marijuana and in some parts of the state, that number is as high as 1 in 4.

Other key findings include:

·    25% reported using marijuana 3 months prior to becoming pregnant

·    12.3% self-reported using marijuana while pregnant

·    13.3% tested positive from urine toxicology testing

When self-reported use was considered together with urine toxicology results, the prevalence reached 16.8%, substantially higher than the national average of 9.8%. This study also found that single pregnant individuals, those with lower educational attainment, individuals who presented with symptoms of depression, or who had a history of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) had a higher likelihood of prenatal marijuana use.

Why are pregnant women turning to marijuana?

·    Perceived safety: nearly 1 in 5 pregnant women believed that weekly marijuana use poses “no risk”

·    Affordability: Michigan’s cannabis market is one the largest in the country, with prices dropping from ~$267 to $65/ounce in 2025

·    Symptom relief: 81.5% reported using it to relieve stress, anxiety

·    Ease of acquisition: 91.7% of pregnant users said that it was easy to obtain

The increased prevalence of marijuana use discovered in this and many other studies, suggest that many pregnant individuals may not fully understand the risks or may be using marijuana for symptom relief without the guidance of their healthcare provider.

To learn more about the risks of marijuana use during pregnancy and parenthood, visit marijuanaknowthetruth.org/marijuana-and-pregnancy for science-based resources, including fast facts, videos, and the latest research.

Source: Drug Free America Foundation | 333 3rd Ave N Suite 200 | St. Petersburg, FL 33701 US

Filed under: Cannabis/Marijuana,Drug use-various effects,Drug use-various effects on foetus, babies, children and youth,Health,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Treatment and Addiction,USA :

INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT BY NDPA:

This paper was originally published in 2007/2008 in the Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice, which was established by Drug Free America Foundation (based in St Petersburg, Florida). Late in 2025, OVOM Sweden expressed interest in re-publishing this paper in their own website, and this prompted several associates of NDPA in other countries to express interest in re-visiting the paper – almost 20 entities have applied so far, and been sent ‘merged’ copies. (NDPA pointed out that because of the size of the paper – approaching 25,000 words – the original paper, as published, had been split into three parts and published in three consecutive volumes of the Journal. To facilitate study of the paper, NDPA undertook to merge the three parts back into one paper, as now presented in this current, merged  re-publishing).

Some of the ‘encouragements’ while undertaking this sizeable task included the following:

  • ‘Peter, thank you very much, we will find a good place for it’. Renee Besseling – OVOM – (NDL)
  • ‘Peter, Excellent paper – I read it through and through’. John Coleman – President, DWI (USA)
  • ‘Thanks – appreciate your always-fine work’. Shane Varcoe – Director, Dalgarno Institute (Au)
  • ‘Great idea – Peter’s articles are a great contribution’. Gary Christian, tpg (Au)
  • ‘This sounds like a great and much-needed initiative, Peter’. Jo Baxter, Exec Director, DFA (Au)
  • ‘Wonderful. Thank you!’. Amy Ronshausen, Exec Director, DFAF, (USA)
  • ‘Thank you very much!’. Beatriz Velasco Munoz Ledo (Mexico)
  • ‘Thank you so much, Peter’. Stuart Reece (Au)

 

PREFACE

Introduction to this re-print – January 2026

This paper was written in the light of the author’s enormous respect for the many organisations he had collaborated with to that point in time – 2007 –  (and with many of whom he continues to collaborate, at this present time in 2026). It also tries to charitably respect those who advocate a Harm Reduction oriented approach to drug strategy and policy (whilst not conclusively respecting their standpoint!). Courtesies aside, a more important point is that this paper dates from 2007, and a lot of water has flowed under the Harm Reduction and the Drug Policy bridges since then!

Whilst it is informative to re-visit this literature, and understand the provenance and the politics of Harm Reduction, it could be very useful if someone were to develop and report on what has passed between 2007 and 2026. (“But don’t look at me!” says Mr Stoker).

 

FOREWORD

Mr. Stoker is Director of the National Drug Prevention Alliance (NDPA), which he helped form. He has completed more than 40 years in this field and has helped three other charities to form, all running well. His first 7 years in the field were as a drugs/alcohol counsellor in a London drug agency; he also created and delivered a wide range of trainings and was a Government ‘Drug Education Advisor’ to some 100 primary and secondary schools. In 1987 he completed a one month study tour throughout America, under the auspices of the US State Department. He has delivered workshops at more than 10 PRIDE conferences, and in 2004 he received the PRIDE Youth Programs International Award for services to prevention. He has completed technology transfer trainings in Poland, Germany, Portugal and Bulgaria. In 2001 he was awarded a First Prize in the Stockholm Challenge contest for websites with a health promotion value. Mr. Stoker is often to be seen or heard on TV, radio or in national/regional newspapers and has authored many articles and papers. For 30 years prior to this career he worked as a Professional (Chartered) Civil Engineer, running projects which would have totalled approaching £10 Billion at present day values.

 

Peter Stoker

 

ABSTRACT

The history of ‘so–called Harm Reduction’ — starting with its conception in and dissemination from the Liverpool area of Britain in the 1980s — is described in comparison with American liberalisers’, ‘Responsible Use’ stratagem in the 1970s and with subsequent so–called Harm Reduction initiatives in the USA, Canada, Australia, Britain and mainland Europe. As the scope of a historical review of Harm Reduction — over several decades and across several countries — is necessarily large, this paper is presented in 3 parts. Part 1 examines the developments in the USA; whilst Part 2 looks at Britain, Canada, and Australia. Part 3 considers mainland Europe, and then goes on to explore reasons why the package called ‘Harm Reduction’ has fared better than ‘Responsible Use’ as well as some possible reasons why the present, Harm–Reduction–biased situation has come about. The text takes extracts from or synopses of papers presented by various writers on both sides of the argument. Reasons as to why the packaging of ‘Harm Reduction’ has fared better than ‘Responsible Use’ are explored as are some possible reasons why the present, Harm–Reduction–biased situation has come about. The paper concludes by suggesting possible ways forward for those advocating a prevention–focused approach –– learning from history.

To access the full document:

  1. Click on the ‘Source’ link below.
  2. An image of the front page of the full document will appear.
  3. Click on the image to open the full document.

 

Source: History of HR – P&P _ Peter Stoker

Filed under: Harm Reduction including HIV (Papers),Latest News,UK :

PHOENIX, ARIZONA, UNITED STATES

by Staff Sgt. Shane Sanders  – 161st Air Refueling Wing  – 01.28.2026

Red Ribbon Week, the nation’s largest and longest running drug prevention campaign, serves as a reminder of the importance of prevention, education, and community involvement.

Observed annually from Oct. 23 through Oct. 31, the campaign brings together schools, families, and organizations nationwide to promote drug-free lifestyles and encourage young people to make healthy choices.

The campaign was established in honor of Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, who was killed in 1985 while investigating drug cartels in Mexico. His sacrifice sparked a national movement symbolized by the red ribbon, which represents a collective stand against substance misuse and a commitment to protecting future generations. Since then, Red Ribbon Week has educated millions through educational programs, student pledges, rallies, and prevention-focused activities.

In Arizona, the Counterdrug Task Force’s Drug Demand Reduction and Outreach (DDRO) program has played an increasing role in Red Ribbon Week by expanding statewide prevention efforts and access to education and outreach services.

In 2023, DDRO recorded 8,107 engagements during Red Ribbon Week, along with 8,050 student pledges. In 2024, those numbers tripled to 25,183 engagements and 11,110 pledges. In 2025, DDRO reached a new milestone, achieving 82,829 engagements and 28,236 student pledges during the campaign.

These figures represent more than attendance totals, they reflect points of connection where prevention messaging reached students, families, and communities. Engagements included in-person classroom presentations, community outreach events, public service announcements, online interactions, YouTube views, and joint outreach efforts conducted with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). DDRO also expanded access through virtual presentations, ensuring schools and organizations unable to host in-person events could still participate.

A major enhancement in 2025 was DDRO’s decision to extend Red Ribbon Week outreach beyond the traditional calendar. Instead of limiting activities to a single week, prevention efforts were expanded from Oct. 1 through Nov. 5. This extended timeframe provided schools greater flexibility to participate, increased accessibility for underserved communities, and amplified statewide impact.

According to Daniel Morehouse, Community Outreach Specialist with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, collaboration between DDRO and DEA played a critical role in amplifying prevention messaging during this year’s Red Ribbon Week. He emphasized that the scale of reach achieved in 2025 would not have been possible without shared resources and coordinated efforts. When agencies work together, Morehouse noted, audiences, particularly youth, are more engaged and receptive.

“Our drive for a Fentanyl Free America requires not just the enforcement side of things, but also outreach and education,” Morehouse said, adding that DDRO’s professionalism and prevention expertise significantly strengthens DEA’s prevention tools and messaging.

The success of DDRO’s Red Ribbon Week is rooted in strong partnerships. Schools across Arizona coordinated schedules, engaged students, and supported prevention activities. Community organizations, prevention coalitions, and agency partners worked alongside DDRO to strengthen outreach and reinforce consistent prevention messaging.

Merilee Fowler, Executive Director of the Substance Awareness Coalition Leaders of Arizona, highlighted the importance of collaboration in achieving meaningful impact. She shared that it was inspiring to see the number of students and adults reached during the 2025 campaign; noting that students across Arizona proudly pledged to grow up safe, healthy, and drug-free.

Fowler emphasized that coordinated prevention efforts strengthen communities statewide. When prevention organizations and coalitions work together, she explained, they create collective impact that improves the ability to prevent and reduce substance use. She also stressed the importance of a comprehensive approach that balances enforcement with education and outreach.

“Preventing and solving drug problems in our communities is complex and requires a combination of enforcement, education, and outreach,” Fowler said. “Success depends on all of us working together as a united team.”

She further noted that effective prevention must include families as well as youth. Partnerships among DDRO, SACLAZ, DEA, and other organizations have expanded outreach to parents and caregivers, and open conversations at home about the real harms of substance use play a critical role in prevention, she said.

U.S. Arizona Air National Guard Senior Master Sgt. Michael Gunderson, serves as the Non-Commission Officer in Charge of Arizona DDRO. In this role, Gunderson oversees the planning, coordination, and execution of statewide substance-use prevention and education efforts, working closely with schools, community coalitions, law-enforcement agencies, and prevention partners.

“At the heart of Red Ribbon Week and DDRO’s expanding efforts are the students themselves. Each pledge represents a personal commitment, and each engagement reflects a conversation that may influence future decisions,” said Gunderson. “The continued growth of DDRO’s Red Ribbon Week outreach demonstrates the power of prevention when communities unite around a shared purpose, protecting youth, honoring legacy, and building healthier, safer futures.”

As DDRO continues to grow, the program remains committed to refining its practices through evaluation, evidence-based strategies, and flexible delivery methods tailored to community needs. These efforts ensure prevention messaging remains accessible, relevant, and effective.

Source: https://www.dvidshub.net/news/556965/arizona-red-ribbon-week-expands-reach-spreading-prevention-awareness

Filed under: Age-related,Education,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,USA,Youth :

OPENING STATEMENT BY NDPA:

This article combines two emails – the first from Herschel Baker of Drug Free Australia and the reply from John Coleman,  President of the Board of Directors of Drug Watch International, and they therefore need to be studied as a collective assessment by experts on this subject.

From: John Coleman <john.coleman.phd@gmail.com>
Sent: 06 January 2026 14:30
To: Herschel Baker <hmbaker1938@hotmail.com>;
Subject: Re:

Herschel, 

Thank you for the very informative report. And yes, there are TV commercials playing in the Washington DC area thanking Trump for closing the border, reducing taxes, and rescheduling cannabis. The ad says that recognizing cannabis as a medicine will end the cartel’s monopoly, help the elderly, and military vets, etc. 

It is truly amazing how often we repeat history, much to our own detriment. In 1858, after two wars fought with China over the importation and sale of opium, produced by the East India Company in India, then a British colony, several treaties were executed between the defeated empire and Western powers having assets and interests in the region. 

The British treaty (there were four separate treaties between China and Russia, China and the U.S., China and the United Kingdom, and China and Russia) was perhaps the most important at the time because of the UK’s opium interests in India and China and the two very destructive wars that had been fought between the ill-equipped Chinese and the well-trained and well-equipped British forces (supported, of all things, by soldiers of the Second French Empire). 

Lord Elgin aka James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin and 12th Earl of Kincardine, was sent by the U.K. to fight the war and, later, negotiate the peace treaty to end it. He was, to say the least, ruthless in war and cunning in peace. In the treaty, Elgin forced the Chinese to continue to accept British imports of Indian opium that, in turn, would be taxed at the port and the monies used to assist persons and families adversely affected by smoking opium. I give Elgin credit for inventing the  theory of Harm Reduction (apologies to Al Lindesmith). 

Elgin’s plan worked horribly because overnight a domestic market in China for producing opium sprung up to compete (successfully) with the taxed and more expensive imported British opium. In time, China became not just an opium consuming nation but a prolific opium producer, as well. 

In 1893, Queen Victoria, responding to growing criticism at home and abroad, formed a Royal Commission to study the opium trade between India and China. In its report to the Queen whose titles included Empress of India, the Commission concluded that, “the temperate use of opium in India should be viewed in the same light as the temperate use of alcohol in England.” The Commission largely ignored the effect of the opium trade on China where, five years later, The Times of London reported that 70 percent of adult males were using opium. 

It would take at least another half-century to undo Elgin’s plan. Beginning in 1949, revolutionary dictator Mao Zedong had to murder and banish millions of addicts over the course of his long reign as head of the PRC to end what Elgin started. 

But not to worry. The cannabis industry today and their TV ads promise that this time around things will be better and making cannabis a medicine will accomplish great things and destroy the cartels. The French have a good saying for this: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (The more things change, the more they remain the same.) 

Amazing!

John Coleman

From: Herschel Baker <hmbaker1938@hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, January 5, 2026 10:23 PM
To: John Coleman -john.coleman.phd@gmail.com
Subject: DOJ could ignore Trump’s cannabis rescheduling order?

Good Afternoon,

1.      It appears that Trump has dismissed the drug prevention network concerns regarding very the harmful effects on America future Generations by strong THC. Please note that both the PAC and MAGA Inc., lists Charles Gantt as its treasurer it appears that MAGA has received $1 million from the marijuana industry.
.,
2.      I believe that Erika Kirk of Turning Point maybe the best approach to President Trump who is trying to move Medical Marijuana from Scheduling 1 because Turning Point is strongly focus on students and this change to a very weak Scheduling 3 is just a money maker for Big Cannabis. Erika Kirk of Turning Point is the one that can lead the debate to President Trump that he has been dupe and con regarding both the Mental and Physical health cause to the community by very strong THC in Medical Marijuana and edibles.

Please note additional information below.
Re: President Donald Trump recent marijuana rescheduling order, some are arguing that it will “destroy” the illicit market and support seniors and military veterans who could benefit from cannabis.
“Trump’s action will destroy the cartel’s illicit black market, expand medical research and ensure seniors and veterans safely receive the care they need,”
The description of the impact of the executive order is somewhat exaggerated, in part because it suggests the rescheduling deal is done. In reality, the order directs the attorney general to expeditiously complete the process of moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

The Justice Department has not given a timeline for when that might happen, and congressional researchers recently pointed out that it’s possible the agency could start the process over again, or decline to move forward all together.

But even if and when the process is finalized, it’s unclear how that would “destroy” the illicit market. Rescheduling cannabis wouldn’t federally legalize it, which advocates have argued would be necessary in order to meaningfully disrupt illegal sales.
The tax parity impact of moving marijuana to Schedule III is one of the more significant reasons industry stakeholders have been pushing for the incremental reform, even if it doesn’t immediately legalize cannabis. Beyond that, a Schedule III designation would symbolically recognize the plant’s medical value and loosen certain research restrictions tied to Schedule I drugs.
Notably, the organization behind the new ad is associated with the similarly named America First Agriculture Action Inc., a PAC that lists Charles Gantt as its treasurer. Gantt is also the treasurer of Trump’s own political committee, MAGA Inc., which reported receiving $1 million from a marijuana industry PAC that’s supported by multiple major cannabis companies.

That committee, the American Rights and Reform PAC, separately released ads in May that attacked former President Joe Biden’s marijuana policy record in an apparent attempt to push Trump to go further on the issue.

Meanwhile, a coalition of Republican state attorneys general are criticizing Trump’s decision to federally reschedule marijuana, saying cannabis is “properly” classified as a Schedule I drug with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.
Earlier this month, groups of House and Senate Republican lawmakers also sent letters urging Trump not to reschedule cannabis. Trump, however, dismissed those concerns—pointing out that an overwhelming majority of Americans support the reform and that cannabis can help people who are suffering from serious health issues, including his personal friends.

This following link is to a piece is from a pro pot source but sheds light on what is behind the move:.
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/group-with-ties-to-trump-linked-pac-applauds-marijuana-rescheduling-move-in-new-ad-saying-itll-help-veterans-and-destroy-illicit-market/

Kind regards

Herschel Baker
International Liaison Director
Queensland Director
Drug Free Australia

Source:   President of the Board of Directors of Drug Watch International -john.coleman.phd@gmail.com

 

Filed under: Latest News,Political Sector,USA :

Back to top of page

Powered by WordPress