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by Josie Ensor, Chief US Reporter – The Times of London –  May 09 2026 – The Sunday Times

Corporations at the top of America’s $30bn trade are accused of false advertising — it could become their Big Tobacco moment

 

Heather Bacchus worried when her 15-year-old son started using marijuana. Randy Jr was a bright, precocious teenager doing well at his school in Minnesota, but like many children his age he experienced ADHD and anxiety.

He had turned to cannabis to quiet what Bacchus called his “overactive brain”. However, she noticed an almost immediate, worrying shift in his mood.

“He went from someone with all these goals, dreams and aspirations to suddenly withdrawing from sports and hiding in his room,” Bacchus said, speaking from the family home.

Her husband, Randy Sr, said: “As responsible parents, we did the research. Everything we read or looked at online just said marijuana was not a big deal — it was benign, harmless.” After Randy moved out and went to live by himself in Colorado, he started to have delusions, became paranoid and fell into a psychotic state. Randy would end up taking his own life aged 21.

The Bacchuses believe their son’s marijuana addiction played a role. “He was taking medical marijuana to relieve anxiety and depression, but in the end the same things that he thought it was helping him for were actually just being made worse.”

Last week they welcomed a landmark class-action lawsuit filed on Monday against three of the biggest cannabis companies in America for advertising their products as medicine capable of treating pain and a broad array of mental health disorders despite allegedly knowing that the science did not support their claims.

The suit is the first of its kind and has been likened by advocates who campaign against the drug to the legal reckoning faced by the tobacco industry in the late 1990s, which found that US tobacco companies had been deceptive. It led to restrictions around billboard advertising and commercials specifically targeting young people, and triggered anti-smoking campaigns, which led to a dramatic drop in the rates of smoking in the years that followed.

“I really think this could be a master settlement moment.” Kevin Sabet, a former White House drug policy adviser and president of the advocacy group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, told The Sunday Times. The tobacco master settlement agreement was the largest civil litigation settlement in US history and resulted in major companies agreeing to pay states $206 billion to cover smoking-related health costs.

Facing possible civil penalties and punitive damages into the billions, the stakes are high for the cannabis industry. If the plaintiffs are successful, it could spark a wave of similar action — threatening to bankrupt its biggest players.

The legal cannabis industry has boomed in the past decade, when states began legalising its recreational use — allowing it to evolve from a taboo, illicit market into a regulated, multibillion-dollar economy. In the US, it is now a $30 billion business, while the UK market is currently valued at around £233 million, the largest in Europe after Germany.

  • Bereaved brother attacks ‘Wild West’ medical cannabis advertising

Medicinal marijuana shops are popping up all over the 40 US states where it is legal. The smell of weed fills the air of the streets of densely packed New York, where recreational use of the substance was legalised in 2021.

Since then, air-quality complaints to the council over the city’s unofficial scent have doubled. Even international tennis players visiting New York for last year’s US Open have joked about it: Alexander Zverev called Court 17 of the Queens venue “Snoop Dogg’s living room”, and Nick Kyrgios, an asthmatic, suggested it had affected his game.

In downtown Brooklyn, new dispensaries open every week. One named the Travel Agency aims at a high-income market, while another, Buzzy, appears from the outside little different to an ice cream store. They require customers to show a valid form of ID to prove they are over 21, however they are not asked for any doctor’s note or card proving the medical need for marijuana.

Lawyers acting for 42 consumers allege in the suit, filed in Illinois, that Cresco Labs, Green Thumb Industries and Verano Holding Corp falsely and deceptively promote hundreds of their products as “great for”, “aiding”, “treating” and “alleviating” pain, anxiety and insomnia, as well as a host of mental health disorders, including PTSD, schizophrenia and depression.

They claim the promotions and product descriptions provide no citation or basis for substantiating these claims, nor any explanation as to how the specific product being promoted uniquely or effectively treats medical disorders.

“They have been framing a dangerous drug as a wellness product,” said Sabet, who suggested it has been considered “uncool” to criticise the recreational use of cannabis or question claims of its medicinal properties. “Only now I think we are starting to see some cracks in this decades-long idea that you can’t question those claims,” he said.

Marijuana is used by some pregnant women for morning sickness, for example: however, a number of studies have warned it can affect foetal development, leading to behavioural problems among infants and toddlers later in life.

Patrick Kenneally, an attorney and former Illinois state prosecutor, said he decided to bring the case after seeing some of the effects cannabis was having on his constituents. “I have met with countless families whose lives, health and cognition have been seriously impaired or destroyed by cannabis use,” he said. Kenneally said he wanted companies to be required to warn customers about their products’ dangers to mental and physical health.

Cannabis products are now sold in a much wider variety of forms, from premade spliffs to gummies and lollipops, which anti-drug advocates say is done deliberately to appeal to the lucrative younger market.

Some are marketed as sleep aids, others make claims they can heighten creativity and focus. The complaint cites company blog posts featuring titles such as “Best Cannabis Strains for Anxiety & Stress”.

“Young people are seeing marijuana being sold in these kid-friendly products — the candies, the gummies, the elixirs — and they’re thinking how could this be bad for you?” Sabet said. “It’s normalising it in ways that go beyond what tobacco did. The industry at one point claimed cigarettes were good for the throat, but they never claimed to actually treat and cure diseases like the marijuana industry does.”

Edibles on sale today also have far greater concentrations of THC, the component of the plant that produces a high, than they did decades ago.

“The weed that was around when we were young is nowhere near the strength it is today,” said Randy Bacchus Sr, who, alongside his wife, has become an advocate for youth mental health and substance use prevention in the wake of their son’s death in 2021. “I think it disrupted the chemical balance of his brain at a really crucial time in his development,” he said of Randy Jr’s near-daily use from the age of 15.

Recent data from the National Institutes of Health found that nearly a quarter of college students reported to have had marijuana in the past 30 days, and nearly one in 12 college students were daily or near-daily users. A national survey in the UK found similar rates.

About 53 per cent of people who say they use cannabis for health reasons say they do so to relieve pain.

However, medical societies such as the International Association for the Study of Pain, recommend against cannabis as a go-to treatment, because the data is limited and there is a risk of side-effects, including dizziness and nausea.

After pain, anxiety is the most common medicinal reason consumers cite for using cannabis. The American Psychiatric Association opposes the medical use of cannabis saying there is insufficient evidence and a strong association between cannabis use and psychiatric disorders, especially among adolescents and young adults, like Randy.

A study published last year by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy found that states legalising recreational marijuana experienced a 12 per cent increase in the number of people admitted to state mental health facilities.

Lynn Silver, a senior advisor at the Public Health Institute, said the lawsuits were especially significant because they were going after major cannabis corporations.

“Like tobacco litigation before it, this legal strategy could help expose harmful industry practices, reveal internal corporate misconduct, and establish stronger accountability standards,” said Silver, who is director of Getting It Right from the Start. “Big Tobacco’s decades of deception were ultimately challenged through litigation that helped uncover the truth. These lawsuits may prove to be an equally important public health inflection point.”

A spokesman for Verano said in a statement that the suit “mirrors claims that have been rejected by courts in similar legal actions against multistate operators in the industry earlier this year”.

Officials from Cresco and Green Thumb said they did not comment on ongoing litigation.

  • UK fights to keep stronger cannabis products after ‘Brexit reset’

The lawsuit comes at a time when federal regulation on marijuana is loosening, not tightening, however. Cannabis products are currently not required to disclose possible risk, as the drug is not regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Last month the Trump administration relaxed federal controls on medical marijuana, moving the product from a class of highly addictive drugs, such as heroin, to a category of lower-risk medicines, like prescription Tylenol. It is a change the cannabis industry had sought for years and that Trump endorsed during his 2024 campaign.

It will give those companies tax breaks and help fund research required for marijuana to gain approval from the FDA, which would make it legal to prescribe at the federal level.

For the Bacchuses, that is an alarming prospect. “If they want to call it a medical aid, then they need to start really treating it as a prescription with regular check-ups with a doctor to make sure it is actually working,” said Randy Sr. “I just want to say to parents: research these products, don’t just accept what the marketing tells you.”

Heather Bacchus said: “Our son was into working out, he was into his health, he wanted to be successful in life. I truly believe had he known the reality, how this would impact his brain, before he started using, then he’d probably still be here with us today.”

 

Source: www.drugwatch.org

Filed under: Cannabis/Marijuana,Latest News,Marijuana and Medicine,Strategy and Policy,USA :

From US White House – 04.05.2026

The White House released its National Drug Control Strategy, which, among other efforts, recommends effective primary prevention programs. The initiative increases the implementation of evidence-based prevention strategies; establishes new partnerships with organizations supporting youth health and expanding primary prevention; supports a national media and education campaign against drug use; and supports and enhances the federal drug-free workplace program.

Source: https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2026-05-06-white-house-announces-national-drug-control-strategy

Filed under: Latest News,Strategy and Policy,USA :

Submitted by Maggie Petito on behalf of DrugWatch International – April 23, 2026

Article by Andrea Petersen – Wall Street Journal – April 23, 2026

Studies show the drug can exacerbate anxiety and teen use poses risks for developing brains

In many states, it is already easy to get marijuana. With the Trump administration’s move to reclassify the drug as less dangerous, it is about to get even easier. But doctors and researchers say marijuana can pose real risks to people’s health.

The major concerns for adults are addiction and mental-health problems, particularly anxiety. These risks have become more of an issue in recent years as products with high levels of THC, the main psychoactive component of cannabis, have become widely available and popular. 

Here is what we know about the health risks from marijuana use:

Higher potency

The weed that people smoked in decades past generally had about 3% to 5% THC. Now, many shops sell products that contain as much as 90% THC.
Dr. Jonathan Avery, vice chair for addiction psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine, says he’s seeing more people land in the emergency room after accidentally overdosing on high-potency THC products, particularly edibles, where people can underestimate how much they have taken. “You can feel panicky and paranoid. People come in worried that they’re dying,” he said.   

The drug is particularly dangerous for teens: Even low-level use is linked to an increased risk of developing psychiatric disorders and doing poorly in school. 

With recreational marijuana legal in 24 states and Washington, D.C., driving while high is on the rise, too. In some studies, using cannabis was found to double the risk of crashes.

Addiction and mental health

The cannabis industry is increasingly marketing its products for a range of health issues, including anxiety and depression, pain and sleep problems. Some companies also promote their products for general wellness, akin to a multivitamin. A growing number of people use cannabis every day. Now, more people use cannabis than alcohol daily. 

Among people who use marijuana daily, about 20% to 30% will develop cannabis use disorder, Avery said. The disorder is characterized by craving marijuana and being unable to cut down on use. “You need more to get the same effect and you feel off without it,” he said. 

While many people use cannabis to cope with anxiety, some scientific studies show that the drug makes anxiety worse. It is associated with increased odds of developing anxiety problems and with more severe symptoms in those with anxiety and mood disorders.

The teenage brain 

When it comes to marijuana, doctors and scientists tend to worry most about its impact on the developing brain. Research has found that adolescent cannabis use increases the risk of developing psychosis, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety disorders. 

Regularly using cannabis during the teen years also is associated with disruption in memory and learning. One study found that frequent cannabis users who started taking it during adolescence lost several IQ points between the ages of 13 and 38. 

Even infrequent use among teens is associated with poorer academic performance.

Potential upsides to reclassification 

The reclassification will make it easier for researchers to conduct studies with marijuana. It is something the field badly needs, scientists say. 
“People are using these products anyway,” said Staci Gruber, director of the Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery (MIND) program at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts. “Wouldn’t it be better for us to be able to give them empirically sound data upon which to base their decisions for use or their decisions not to use?”

Source: www.drugwatch.org

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

by Professor Bernard Stewart, A/Prof. Sitas and Prof. Stewart – 28 April 2026

A comprehensive review led by cancer researchers at UNSW found vaping is likely to cause lung and oral cancer – even before long-term studies can confirm the exact risk.

Nicotine-based vapes, or e-cigarettes, are likely to cause cancers of the lung and oral cavity, say the authors of a new study, opens in a new window led by UNSW Sydney and published today in Carcinogenesis.

The study analysing a wide body of global research was led by UNSW cancer researcher Adjunct Professor Bernard Stewart AM, with investigators from The University of Queensland, Flinders University, The University of Sydney, as well as Royal North Shore, The Prince Charles and Sunshine Coast University hospitals.

The team brought together experts from multiple disciplines, including pharmacists, epidemiologists, thoracic surgeons and public health researchers. Together, they examined the evidence from different scientific perspectives.

 “To our knowledge, this review is the most definitive determination that those who vape are at increased risk of cancer compared to those who don’t,” Prof. Stewart says.

This assessment of carcinogenicity – or, cancer causation – review argues that while researchers have long focused on vaping as a gateway to smoking, less attention has been paid to whether the devices might cause cancer on their own.

It is one of the most detailed attempts yet to determine whether vaping itself may cause cancer, independent of tobacco smoking. The analysis draws together clinical studies, animal experiments and laboratory research examining the chemicals produced by e-cigarettes.

“Considering all the findings – from clinical monitoring, animal studies and mechanistic data – e-cigarettes are likely to cause lung cancer and oral cancer,” Prof. Stewart says.

He says though the consistency of findings across those disciplines was striking, the exact number of attributable cancer cases remains unclear.

“Our assessment is qualitative and does not involve a numerical estimate of cancer risk or burden. We’ll only be able to determine the precise risk once longer-term studies are available.”

Growing public health concerns

E-cigarettes were first sold in the early 2000s and became available in Australia around 2008. Early marketing framed them as a ‘safer’ alternative to tobacco cigarettes, as well as a possible aid for quitting smoking.

But the colourful, flavoured devices of today have spread quickly and widely, particularly among young people. Vaping is now a common sight outside schools, bars and train stations across Australia, despite the Australian government introducing new laws to regulate vapes in 2023. Disposable vapes and non-therapeutic vapes are banned, while therapeutic vapes can only be sold in pharmacies, and only to help people quit smoking.

“E-cigarettes are known to be a gateway to smoking and hence cancer,” says co-author UNSW Associate Professor Freddy Sitas.

“But the extent to which they may cause cancer in their own right has not received as much attention in research,” he says.

“The evidence was remarkably consistent across fields,” he says. “It dictated an unequivocal finding now, though human studies that estimate the risk will take decades to accumulate.”

A clear outcome

Smoking has been studied for more than a century. Though e-cigarettes are relatively new, inhaling nicotine-laced aerosols is already linked to addiction, poisoning, inhalation injuries and burns.

While researchers wait for long-term population studies showing whether people who vape are more likely to develop cancer, they must rely on multiple other forms of evidence.

The team identified numerous carcinogenic compounds in e-cigarette aerosols, including volatile organic chemicals and metals released from heating coils.

They examined several types of evidence: biomarkers in people showing DNA damage, oxidative stress and tissue inflammation; experiments in mice that caused lung tumours; and laboratory studies showing cellular damage and disrupted biological pathways linked to cancer.

Taken together, the researchers say the evidence points strongly in one direction.

A compounding problem

There is also growing evidence that many smokers who switch to vaping don’t quit cigarettes.

“Most of those who use e-cigarettes to quit smoking end up in ‘dual-use-limbo’, unable to shake off either habit,” says A/Prof. Sitas.

“What we do know from recent epidemiological evidence from the USA is that those who both vape and smoke are at an additional four-fold increased risk of developing lung cancer.”

This was described in commentary, opens in a new window also published today by A/Prof. Sitas and Prof. Stewart in Cancer Epidemiology.

History repeating

A/Prof. Sitas and Prof. Stewart traced parallels between the early scientific evidence linking smoking to disease and emerging concerns about vaping.

It took nearly a century of scientific investigation – from the mid-1800s to the landmark US Surgeon General’s report, opens in a new window in 1964 – before smoking was officially recognised as a cause of lung cancer.

During that time, early warning signs were often dismissed or overlooked.

“Early reports linked smoking to infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, followed by cardiovascular disease, stroke and lung cancer,” A/Prof Sitas says.

He says the same pattern may now be unfolding with vaping – and that researchers should not repeat the delay that occurred with cigarettes.

“E-cigarettes were introduced about 20 years ago. We should not wait another 80 years to decide what to do.”

Considering all the findings – from clinical monitoring, animal studies and mechanistic data – e-cigarettes are likely to cause lung cancer and oral cancer.

Source: Herschel Baker, International Liaison Director, Queensland Director, Drug Free Australia

www.drugfree.org.au

Filed under: Australia,Culture,Drug use-various effects on foetus, babies, children and youth,Latest News,Vaping :
  • Molecular Psychiatry– Published: 

by Beth Han, and

Nora D. Volkow, 

Christopher M. Jones, 

Deborah Dowell, 

Grant Baldwin, 

Emily B. Einstein, 

Geetha A. Subramaniam, 

Yngvild Olsen, 

Carlos Blanco and

Wilson M. Compton 

Abstract

Polysubstance use disorders ( ≥ 2 substance use disorders (SUDs)) are associated with high morbidity and mortality. We analyzed data from 92,233 adult participants in the 2022–2023 US National Surveys on Drug Use and Health to estimate past-year prevalence of polysubstance use disorders and to examine their associations with age of substance use initiation. Multivariable logistic regression and Poisson regression were applied. Age- and sex-adjusted past-year prevalence of 2 SUDs was 19.2–44.9% (95% CIs=11.1–62.3%) among adults with any SUD. Age- and sex-adjusted past-year prevalence of ≥3 SUDs ranged from 16.4% (95% CI = 14.3–18.6%) among adults with cannabis use disorder, to 32.4–44.7% (95% CIs=29.1–51.3%) among those with opioid use disorder or prescription stimulant or tranquilizer/sedative use disorder, and up to 48.2–72.0% (95% CIs=39.4–81.7%) among those with methamphetamine, cocaine, or hallucinogen use disorder. Overall, compared to adults who initiated substance use before age 18, the number of SUDs was 73–83% lower for those who initiated at age ≥21 (range of incidence density ratios (IDRs)=0.17–0.27, 95% CIs=0.12–0.31). Specifically, compared with corresponding adult counterparts who initiated before age 18, the number of moderate-severe SUDs was 32% lower among those initiating alcohol at ages 21–29 (IDR = 0.68, 95% CI = 0.57–0.83), 21% lower among those initiating cannabis at ages 21–29 (IDR = 0.79, 95% CI = 0.69–0.90), and 45–62% lower (IDRs=0.38–0.55, 95% CIs=0.31–0.76) among adults who never initiated alcohol, cannabis, or nicotine use. The elevated prevalence of polysubstance use disorders associated with early initiation of substance use underscores the critical need for evidence-based strategies to prevent alcohol, cannabis, and nicotine consumption before age 21.

Introduction

Polysubstance use disorders (having ≥2 substance use disorders (SUDs)) are associated with significant morbidity, poor treatment adherence and outcomes, and high mortality [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Polysubstance use disorders reflect shared neurobiological mechanisms, with addictive drugs inducing common mesolimbic dopamine adaptations that strengthen reinforcement and promote cross‑sensitization across substances [1, 8]. Moreover, shared developmental [8,9,10,11] and genetic [2, 12, 13] vulnerabilities interact with environmental factors [14, 15], collectively increasing risk across drug classes and sustaining persistent polysubstance use and use disorders.

However, significant gaps persist in our understanding of the current prevalence, severity, and correlates of polysubstance use disorders. Existing studies’ reliance on data collected more than a decade ago, the exclusion of nicotine dependence, or a narrow focus on opioid misuse and opioid use disorder, constrain our understanding of current polysubstance use disorders and hinder the development of effective prevention and treatment strategies.

In particular, the epidemiology of SUDs has evolved since researchers examined national data from 2012–2013 [16]. While alcohol use disorder declined during 2002–2019, drug use disorders (e.g., cannabis and methamphetamine use disorders) increased during 2015–2019 [17,18,19]. Few studies of polysubstance use disorders include nicotine [7, 16, 20], despite its widespread use among adults, common co‑use with alcohol, cannabis, and other drugs [3, 21,22,23], and links between nicotine dependence and persistent co‑occurring SUDs due to shared neurobiological pathways, notably dopaminergic enhancement and nicotine’s potentiating effects of other substances [21, 24,25,26,27,28,29,30].

National data from 2012–2013 revealed that 93.3% of adults with opioid use disorder used ≥2 substances and 26.1% met criteria for polysubstance use disorder [20]. Similar polydrug use patterns were reported from 2017–2019 data among people misusing prescription opioids and those using heroin [31]. None of the studies examined prescription opioid, stimulant, and sedative/tranquilizer use disorders among people reporting no misuse of these medications. Yet, “medically guided adults” represent a significant polysubstance use group that warrants clinical attention and inclusion in research on polysubstance use disorders [32,33,34].

Assessing how the age of onset relates to polysubstance use disorders is also directly relevant to prevention and intervention strategies. In addition to sociodemographic and mental health correlates of polysubstance use [6, 20] and use disorders [7, 16], early substance use during a period of neurodevelopmental immaturity in the reward, executive‑control, and stress‑regulation circuits heightens sensitivity to addictive substances and increases vulnerability to polysubstance use and use disorders [35, 36]. Early initiation can disrupt the development of cognitive control, emotional regulation, and decision‑making, creating a cascade that elevates the risk of polysubstance use [36, 37]. Early exposure also strengthens associative learning—such as conditioned cues, expectancies, and cross‑sensitization—facilitating progression from single‑ to polysubstance use [38]. Notably, early use often occurs in peer or family environments that reinforce substance‑use behaviors, further promoting polysubstance use [39]. However, no study has examined the relationships between the age of overall and specific substance use initiation and polysubstance use disorders, using recent nationally representative US data and assessing specific SUDs based on DSM-5 diagnostic criteria. To inform clinical practice and policy, it is essential to understand the relationships between age of initiation—both overall and substance-specific—and moderate-severe polysubstance use disorders.

Using 2022–2023 nationally representative data, we examined the following questions and our hypothesis:

  • What is the national prevalence of overall and moderate-severe polysubstance use disorders? How does the prevalence vary by age of initiation of overall and specific substance use? What is the national prevalence of specific combinations of polysubstance use disorders?
  • How is the age of initiation—both overall and substance-specific—associated with overall and moderate-severe polysubstance use disorders? We hypothesized that adults who initiated substance use before age 18 would be more likely to have overall and moderate-severe polysubstance use disorders, compared with those who initiated at an older age.

Methods

Data sources

We examined nationally representative data from 92,233 US civilian, noninstitutionalized adults aged ≥18 who participated in the 2022–2023 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) [6, 34, 35]. The Institutional Review Board at the Research Triangle Institute International approved the NSDUH data collection protocol. NSDUH used multimode (in-person/online) data collection [33, 34, 40, 41]. Each participant provided informed consent [40, 41]. The mean NSDUH weighted household screening response rate was 25.0%, and the mean NSDUH weighted interview response rate for adults was 49.5% [40, 41].

Measures

NSDUH collected past-year use of tobacco products or nicotine vaping, alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, methamphetamine, inhalants, and illegally made fentanyl, past-year use and misuse of psychotropic medications (prescription opioids, stimulants, and sedatives/tranquilizers), and age of specific substance use initiation [40, 41]. To reduce recall bias, NSDUH did not collect the age of misuse initiation for respondents who began misusing psychotropic medications prior to the past year.

Psychotropic use included using one’s own prescription as directed by a doctor as well as misuse [33, 34, 40, 41]. NSDUH classified misuse of psychotropic medications when respondents endorsed any of the statements describing their use at any point in the past year: “without a prescription of my own”; “in greater amounts than prescribed”; “more often than prescribed”; “longer than prescribed”; or “in some other way a doctor did not direct me to use” [33, 34, 40, 41]. Opioid misuse was defined as misuse of prescription opioids or use of heroin or illegally made fentanyl.

Using DSM-5 diagnostic criteria, NSDUH assessed past-year alcohol and other specific drug use disorders and their severity (moderate-severe: having ≥4 DSM-5 symptoms) and major depressive episode (MDE) [40, 41]. The 2022–2023 NSDUH assessed prescription opioid, stimulant, and sedative/tranquilizer use disorders among people who used these medications regardless of their misuse status [33, 34, 40, 41]. NSDUH examined past-month nicotine dependence using the Nicotine Dependence Syndrome Scale and Fagerstrom Test of Nicotine Dependence [40,41,42]. Additionally, NSDUH assessed sociodemographic characteristics, self-rated health, past-year emergency department visits, and past-year suicidal ideation [40,41,42].

Statistical analyses

We conducted separate (i.e., independent), multivariable, multinomial logistic regression analyses to estimate the age- and sex-adjusted prevalence of the number of different substances used/misused in the past year and the number of SUDs (1) among adults with past-year use/misuse of a specific substance and (2) among adults with a specific past-year SUD. Similarly, we also estimated the number of moderate-severe SUDs among adults with a specific past-year moderate-severe alcohol or drug use disorder, after controlling for age and sex. We conducted separate (i.e., independent), multinomial logistic regression analyses to estimate the prevalence of the number of substances used/misused in the past year and the number of SUDs overall and stratified by age of initiation of overall and specific substance use among adults.

We provide a more detailed breakdown of the prevalence of the number of SUDs, including the prevalence of having 1 SUD, 2 SUDs, and ≥3 SUDs, helping to understand the detailed scope of substance use disorders and quantify their impacts more precisely. The prevalence of ≥2 SUDs is the sum of the prevalence of 2 SUDs and the prevalence of ≥3 SUDs.

We estimated prevalence of specific combinations of SUDs overall and by age and sex. Multivariable Poisson regressions [43, 44] were applied to examine associations between age of initiation of overall and substance-specific use and count outcomes:(1) the number of SUDs (primary outcome); (2) the number of different substances used or misused in the past year (secondary outcome); and (3) the number of moderate-severe SUDs (secondary outcome) among adults after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, health status, and mental health conditions. We examined three highly correlated outcomes; given their conceptual relatedness and correlation, we did not apply formal multiple-comparison correction but interpreted findings (especially those related to secondary outcomes) in light of potential multiplicity.

All analyses used SUDAAN software (Release 11.0.3) to account for NSDUH’s complex sample design and sample weights. For each analysis, P < 0.05 (2-tailed) was considered statistically significant. The STROBE reporting guideline was followed for cross-sectional studies.

Results

Age- and sex-adjusted past-year prevalence of overall and moderate-severe polysubstance use disorders

Over two-thirds of adults used alcohol in the past year (Supplementary Table 1). Among them, age- and sex-adjusted past-year prevalence of using ≥4 substances was 15.3% (95% CI = 14.7–15.8%) (Table 1, Fig. 1a). By contrast, past-year prevalence of opioid misuse among adults was 3.3% (95% CI = 3.1–3.6%); yet among them, age- and sex-adjusted prevalence of using ≥4 substances was 53.4% (95% CI = 51.0–55.9%). Similarly, past-year prevalence of using hallucinogens, cocaine, methamphetamine, or inhalants among adults was low (range=0.7–3.2%, 95% CIs=0.6–3.4%); but among them, the vast majority used ≥4 substances (age- and sex-adjusted prevalence range=73.2–90.5%, 95% CIs=67.3–92.8%).

Fig. 1: Proportions of past-year use of different substances and polysubstance use disorders in US adults.
a Age- and sex-adjusted proportions of the number of different substances used in adults with substance use, by substance (ordered by proportion of using ≥4 substances). b Age- and sex-adjusted proportions of the number of substance use disorders (SUDs) among adults with a specific SUD, by SUD (ordered by proportion of having ≥3 SUDs). c Age- and sex-adjusted proportions of the number of moderate-severe SUDs in adults with a specific moderate-severe SUD, by moderate-severe SUD (ordered by proportion of having ≥3 moderate-severe SUDs). Figure footnote: Source: 2022-2023 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health data. Rx=prescription; Opioid misuse=Heroin, illegally made fentanyl (IMF) use, or Rx opioid misuse; S/T sedative or tranquilizer; § Past-month measure.

Although 66.1% of adults with alcohol use disorder and 61.7% of adults with nicotine dependence did not have other SUDs, most adults with other specific drug use disorders had polysubstance use disorders (Fig. 1b, Table 1, Supplementary Table 1). Age- and sex-adjusted past-year prevalence of 2 SUDs was 19.2–44.9% (95% CIs=11.1–62.3%) among adults with any SUD; prevalence of ≥3 SUDs ranged from 16.4% (95% CI = 14.3–18.6%) among those with cannabis use disorder, 32.4–44.7% (95% CIs=29.1–51.3%) among those with opioid use disorder or prescription stimulant or tranquilizer/sedative use disorder, to 48.2–72.0% (95% CIs=39.4–81.7%) among those with methamphetamine, cocaine, or hallucinogen use disorder.

Similarly, although most adults with moderate-severe alcohol, cannabis, or inhalant use disorder did not have other moderate-severe use disorders, most adults with other specific moderate-severe drug use disorders had ≥2 moderate-severe polysubstance use disorders (Fig. 1c, Table 1, Supplemental Figure). Age- and sex-adjusted past-year prevalence of ≥3 moderate-severe SUDs ranged from 25.6–25.9% (95% CIs=16.8–37.0%) among those with moderate-severe opioid or hallucinogen use disorder to 30.6–43.1% (95% CIs=24.3–52.8%) among those with moderate-severe prescription stimulant, prescription sedative/tranquilizer, methamphetamine, or cocaine use disorder.

Prevalence of specific combinations of polysubstance use disorders

Among US adults in the past year, 76.2% (95% CI = 75.7–76.6%) had no SUD, 17.6% (95% CI = 17.2–18.0%) had 1 SUD, 4.6% (95% CI = 4.4–4.9%) had 2 SUDs, and 1.6% (95% CI = 1.5–1.8%) had ≥3 SUDs (Supplementary Table 2). Specifically, there were 299 unique, exclusive combinations of SUDs, and prevalence of specific combinations of polysubstance use disorders varied by age and sex. For example, past-year prevalence of having alcohol and cannabis use disorders alone was 9.5 times lower among adults aged ≥50 (0.4%, 95% CI = 0.2–0.6%) than those aged 18–29 (3.8%, 95% CI = 3.5–4.1%), but it was 1.6 times higher among males (1.8%, 95% CI = 1.6–2.0%) than females (1.1%, 95% CI = 1.0–1.3%).

The number of substances used/misused by age of initiation of substance use and never use

Past-year prevalence of using ≥4 substances was 16.9% (95% CI = 16.3–17.5%) among adults who initiated using any substance before age 18, compared with 2.3% (95% CI = 1.9–2.8%) among those who initiated it at ages 21–29 (Table 2). Specifically, past-year prevalence of using ≥2 substances was 66.8% among those who initiated alcohol use before age 18, compared with 9.8% among those who never used it. It was 67.7% among those who initiated use of tobacco products or nicotine vaping before age 18, compared with 22.9% among those who never used them; and it was 78.1% among those who initiated cannabis use before 18, compared with 26.9% among those who never used it. These results are highly consistent with those after age- and sex-adjustment (results available upon request).

Table 2 Prevalence of the number of different substances used or misused in the past year among adults in the US overall and by age initiation of overall and specific substance use, weighted percentage (95% CI) (N = 92,233).
Full size table

Polysubstance use disorders by age of initiation of substance use and never use

Among adults who initiated using any substance before age 18, 9.7% had ≥2 SUDs in the past year (Table 3), while among those who initiated at age ≥30, only 0.9% had ≥2 SUDs. Specifically, past-year prevalence of ≥2 SUDs was 10.7% among adults who initiated alcohol use before age 18, compared with 1.3% among those who never used alcohol; it was 11.5% among those who initiated tobacco products or vaping nicotine before age 18, compared with 0.6% among who never used them; and it was 16.8% among those who initiated cannabis use before age 18, compared with 1.1% among those who never used it. These results are highly consistent with those after age- and sex-adjustment (results available upon request).

Table 3 Prevalence of the number of past-year substance use disorders (SUDs)a among adults in the US overall and by age of initiation of overall and specific substance use, weighted percentage (95% CI) (N = 92,233).
Full size table

Multivariable results on the number of different substances used/misused

After controlling for covariates (Table 4), the number of different substances used or misused in the past year was 23–42% lower among adults who initiated substance use in adulthood than among those who initiated earlier (incidence density ratio (IDR) range=0.58–0.77, 95% CIs=0.53–0.79). Specifically (Table 5), compared with corresponding adult counterparts who initiated before age 18, the number of different substances used was 5% lower (IDR = 0.95, 95% CI = 0.93–0.97) among those who initiated alcohol at ages 21–29 and 64% lower (IDR = 0.36, 95% CI = 0.34–0.38) among those who never used alcohol; 4% lower (IDR = 0.96, 95% CIs=0.93–0.99) among those who initiated cannabis at ages 18–29, 28% lower (IDR = 0.72, 95% CI = 0.70–0.74) among those who never used it, but 8% higher (IDR = 1.08, 95% CI = 1.03–1.13) among those who initiated at age ≥30. Compared with counterparts with age of initiation before 18, the number of different substances used was similar among adults who initiated tobacco/nicotine vaping, hallucinogen, or methamphetamine use at ages 18–29, 10–13% higher (IDR range=1.10–1.13, 95% CIs=1.03–1.20) among adults who initiated it at age ≥30, but 6–28% lower (IDR range=0.72–0.94, 95% CIs=0.71–0.98) among those who never used the corresponding substance.

Table 4 After adjusting for covariates, results of 3 multivariable Poisson regression models show age of any substance use initiation associated with: (1) the number of different substances used or misused in the past year (secondary outcome); (2) the number of substance use disorders (SUDs, primary outcome); (3) the number of moderate-severe SUDs (secondary outcome) among adults in the US.
Full size table
Table 5 After adjusting for covariates,c results of 3 multivariable Poisson regression models show age of specific substance use initiation associated with: (1) the number of different substances used or misused in the past year (secondary outcome); (2) the number of substance use disorders (SUDs) (primary outcome); (3) the number of moderate-severe SUDs (secondary outcome) among adults in the US.
Full size table

Multivariable results on the number of SUDs

After adjusting for covariates (Table 4), the number of SUDs was 50–83% lower among adults who initiated substance use during adulthood than before age 18 (IDR range=0.17–0.50, 95% CIs=0.12–0.54). Specifically (Table 5), compared with corresponding adult counterparts who initiated before age 18, the number of SUDs was 7–12% lower (IDR range=0.88–0.93, 95% CIs=0.83–0.97) among those who initiated alcohol or cannabis at ages 18–20 and 14–16% lower (IDR range=0.84–0.86, 95% CIs=0.77–0.93) among those who initiated alcohol or cannabis at ages 21–29; it was 12–26% lower (IDR range=0.74–0.88, 95% CIs=0.69–0.93) among those who never initiated hallucinogens, cocaine, methamphetamine, or inhalants, and 29–65% lower (IDR range=0.31–0.71, 95% CIs=0.31–0.81) among those who never initiated alcohol, cannabis, or tobacco/nicotine use.

Multivariable results on the number of moderate-severe SUDs

Multivariable results (Table 4) showed that the number of moderate-severe SUDs was 59–82% lower among adults who initiated substance use during adulthood than before age 18 (IDR range=0.18–0.41, 95% CIs=0.09–0.46). Specifically, compared with corresponding adult counterparts who initiated before age 18 (Table 5), the number of moderate-severe SUDs was 32% lower for those initiating alcohol at ages 21–29 (IDR = 0.68, 95% CI = 0.57–0.83), 21% lower among those initiating cannabis at ages 21–29 (IDR = 0.79, 95% CI = 0.69–0.90), 23–36% lower (IDR range=0.64–0.77, 95% CIs=0.54–0.93) among those who never initiated hallucinogen, heroin, cocaine, inhalants, or methamphetamine, and 45–62% lower (IDR range=0.38–0.55, 95% CIs=0.31–0.76) among those who never initiated alcohol, cannabis, or tobacco/nicotine use.

Multivariable results also show that the number of moderate-severe SUDs (Supplementary Table 3) was associated with being aged 18–29, male, non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN) or Black race/ethnicity, having <high school or some college education, an annual family income <$20,000, being unemployed or divorced/separated/never married, residing in large metropolitan areas, self-reporting less than excellent health, and having emergency room visit(s), suicidal ideation, and MDE. Similar results were found for overall polysubstance use disorders.

Discussion

We found that use of multiple substances as well as overall and moderate-severe polysubstance use disorders were common among US adults with substance use. Specifically, we found that over half of adults who misused opioids in the past year used ≥4 substances; among adults with opioid use disorder, nearly one-third had ≥3 SUDs. Among adults who used hallucinogens, cocaine, or methamphetamine in the past year, the vast majority used ≥4 substances, and among adults with past-year hallucinogen, cocaine, or methamphetamine use disorder, 48.2–72.0% had ≥3 SUDs. Consistently, nearly half of US drug overdose deaths involved multiple substances in 2022 [5]. Despite a decrease in overall overdose deaths in 2023, polysubstance overdose mortality has continued to increase (e.g., higher number and rate of overdose deaths involving opioids plus cocaine or methamphetamine) [5, 23], further exacerbating the complexity of the overdose crisis (involving more than one substance) and highlighting the urgency of addressing polysubstance use and use disorders.

The observed patterns of polysubstance use disorders may indicate elevated biological and environmental vulnerabilities [2, 8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15, 35,36,37,38,39] among individuals with these conditions, reflecting the critical need for comprehensive screening and intervention. Furthermore, findings on associations between age of substance use initiation and overall and moderate-severe polysubstance use disorders, underscore the importance of implementing evidence-based primary prevention strategies targeting youth throughout adulthood.

Notably, alcohol, cannabis, and nicotine are commonly used substances, contributing to morbidity, mortality, and long-term social-behavioral consequences [18, 45,46,47,48,49,50], which are likely exacerbated by polysubstance use disorders. Although causal relationships cannot be established, our results underscore the critical need for evidence-based targeted prevention strategies for avoiding alcohol, nicotine, and cannabis consumption—particularly before age 21 —and minimizing their consumption thereafter. These results are highly consistent with the established theories that early substance use interacts with neurobiological vulnerabilities and developmental immaturity in reward, control, and stress‑regulation systems, increasing sensitivity to reinforcement and weakening cognitive and emotional regulation [28,29,30, 35,36,37]. Combined with environmental reinforcement and strengthened associative learning [38, 39], these factors create a developmental cascade that elevates the risk of progressing from single‑ to polysubstance use. Taken together, our detailed epidemiological findings help inform data-driven, specific prevention messages. Such prevention efforts may help substantially lower the risk for polysubstance use disorders among adults in the US.

Alcohol is the most prevalent substance used in the US, with a minimum legal drinking age of 21 [51]. Our results of multivariable regression analyses consistently show strong associations between the age of alcohol use initiation and the number of different substances used and polysubstance use disorders. Compared with initiation before age 18, after adjusting for potential confounding factors, alcohol initiation at ages 21–29 was consistently associated with fewer substances used and fewer overall and moderate-severe SUDs. Compared with adults who initiated alcohol before age 18, those who never used alcohol had 64% fewer different substances used, 29% fewer SUDs, and 45% fewer moderate-severe SUDs. These findings suggest that delaying or preventing the initiation of alcohol use—through targeted modifications of risk factors beginning in adolescence and continuing into adulthood—may offer critical leverage points for preventing early onset as well as overall and moderate-severe polysubstance use disorders.

The minimum age for nonmedical cannabis use is 21 in legal cannabis states, where most Americans reside [52]. Compared with initiation before age 18, our study shows that initiation of cannabis use at ages 21–29 was consistently associated with reduced risk for the number of different substances used, polysubstance use disorders, and moderate-severe polysubstance use disorders. Moreover, among adults who never used cannabis, the number of SUDs was 46% lower, and the number of moderate-severe SUDs was 62% lower, compared with their counterparts who initiated use before age 18. Consistent with the alcohol-related results discussed above, findings suggest that delaying or preventing the initiation of cannabis use—via targeted risk-factor prevention and interventions from adolescence through adulthood—may provide critical leverage for preventing early onset as well as overall and moderate-severe polysubstance use disorders.

Similarly, our results suggest associations between tobacco/nicotine use initiation and polysubstance use disorders (overall and moderate-severe). Under US Federal law, 21 is the legal age for tobacco use to reduce youth access [53]. Our results suggest that among adults who never used tobacco/nicotine, the number of different substances used in the past year was 28% lower, the number of SUDs was 65% lower, and the number of moderate-severe alcohol or drug use disorders was 55% lower, compared with their counterparts who initiated use before age 18. Yet, initiation of tobacco or nicotine use at any age appears problematic in relation to both overall and moderate-severe polysubstance use disorders. This may be attributable to nicotine’s highly addictive nature [54], its overlap with other substance use and reward-potentiating effects on other substances [3, 21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30], and the associations between nicotine dependence and persistent co‑occurring SUDs [21, 24,25,26,27].

Our findings on moderate-severe polysubstance use disorders also suggest that substance use prevention efforts benefit from including adults as well. Specifically, compared to initiation before age 18, initiation of hallucinogen, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, or inhalant use at age ≥18 or initiation of alcohol or cannabis use at ≥30 was not associated with fewer moderate-severe SUDs. Thus, our results suggest that targeted risk‑factor prevention and interventions initiated in adolescence and maintained through adulthood may be critical. Clinically, patients who initiated using these drugs during adulthood could still benefit from prevention efforts for moderate-severe polysubstance use disorders. Future research is needed to examine whether and how the risk factors for moderate-severe polysubstance use disorders linked to early initiation (before age 18) differ from those associated with late initiation (age ≥30).

Our findings on the prevalence of specific combinations of and correlates of polysubstance use disorders help inform screening and treatment efforts and tailored patient-centered clinical interventions. Clinical screening efforts for SUDs often focus on patients with early substance use initiation [54]. As anticipated [55], the most commonly used substances—alcohol, cannabis, and nicotine—and corresponding SUDs frequently co-occur with other drug use disorders. Treatment approaches that account for these SUDs may have multiple benefits, as shown in recent findings indicating that tobacco cessation may enhance recovery outcomes from other co-occurring SUDs [56]. Validated, electronic brief screening and assessment tools are available and can be embedded in electronic health records to help detect polysubstance use and related use disorders [57]. Consistent with high overdose mortality rates among non-Hispanic AIAN and Black adults [58,59,60,61], our multivariable results also show that the number of moderate-severe SUDs was markedly higher in these 2 subpopulations than in non-Hispanic White adults. These results suggest the value of incorporating strategies that directly address polysubstance use disorders in substance use interventions and policies for these populations.

Although high prevalence of polysubstance use disorders may contribute to poor treatment outcomes and high mortality [1,2,3,4,5,6,7, 62, 63], their treatment is uniquely challenging. It is necessary to emphasize low-barrier access to patient-centered care through working with patients to set their own treatment goals and prioritizing engagement, stabilization, and functional recovery. Moreover, our results suggest the importance of tailored medical and behavioral interventions for shared reward pathways across substances [2]. Patients may still regard it as acceptable to start treatment for one of their SUDs, even if they are unwilling to address the full range of SUDs simultaneously. Although comprehensive interventions focusing on multiple disorders are often warranted, treatment of even one SUD may confer meaningful benefits in reducing polysubstance use disorders [26, 27]. Remission of one SUD may increase the likelihood of remission of other SUDs and decrease the probability of subsequent onset of new SUDs [26, 27]. Furthermore, research is needed to develop effective treatment mechanisms for polysubstance use disorders (e.g., potential therapeutic benefits of glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) medications) [64, 65]. Future studies are also warranted to delineate the patterns of polysubstance use disorders and their co-occurrence with other mental disorders, thereby informing the development of more integrated treatment approaches. Finally, effectively addressing polysubstance use disorder requires coordinated care across providers (e.g., through integrated care models), peer navigation, and attention to co-occurring mental health conditions [66] and other risk factors [19, 67].

Limitations

This study has several limitations. First, the cross-sectional nature of NSDUH data precludes drawing causal relationships. The use of specific substances may be bidirectionally related to the use of other substances or influenced by additional factors. Also, NSDUH does not collect lifetime SUDs. Future research is needed to fully understand why certain combinations of SUDs co-occur more or less frequently. For example, findings may be strengthened by examining data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, the largest longitudinal investigation of brain and cognitive development in US youth [68]. Second, NSDUH is self-reported and subject to recall and social-desirability bias, and it had low survey response rates during the COVID pandemic. Third, we may underestimate the prevalence of polysubstance use disorders because NSDUH excluded unhoused adults not living in shelters and institutionalized populations who may have a higher prevalence than the general population [69, 70], because NSDUH did not collect past-year tobacco use disorder based on the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria among adults with tobacco or nicotine use, and because use of different substances could occur unintentionally [71]. Fourth, the age of substance use initiation can be impacted by individual characteristics (e.g., genetics, impulsivity, sensation-seeking, anxiety), social-environmental influences (e.g., peer pressure, culture, substance availability), and family history/dynamics [72, 73] that cannot be examined with NSDUH data.

Conclusions

Overall and moderate-severe polysubstance use disorders are common among US adults with substance use, aligning with the recent rise in polysubstance overdose mortality. Attention to polysubstance use disorders and their specific combinations is valuable when planning and implementing SUD treatment—emphasizing low-barrier access, integrated care models, and tailored, patient-centered approaches to address individuals’ complex needs, preferences, and treatment goals. Associations of polysubstance use disorders with age initiations of specific substances underscore the importance of prevention efforts for avoiding alcohol, nicotine, and cannabis consumption, particularly among those aged <21, and minimizing their use thereafter.

Data availability

This study was based on public-use files. Both data and the data dictionary are accessible to the public at: https://www.datafiles.samhsa.gov/dataset/national-survey-drug-use-and-health-2022-nsduh-2022-ds0001.

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

A new review in Jama Internal Medicine takes a hard look at how cannabis affects mental health. The authors note that while many people believe that cannabis helps their mental health, current evidence of its suggested benefits is weak while evidence of harm, especially with high THC products, is substantial. This is particularly important considering reasons for use include symptom management.

This review found insufficient evidence to support cannabis as a treatment for PTSD, ADHD, anxiety, or depression. Studies included in this review found that high THC worsens anxiety and may trigger depressive episodes as well as suicidality in young people and psychotic symptoms, with repeated use raising the risk of chronic psychotic disorders, especially in adolescence. In one of the studies, an 11-fold increase of risk of psychosis was found.

The review pointed out that about 30% of people who reported past-year cannabis use met the criteria for cannabis use disorder (CUD), and about half of those cases were moderate to severe. CUD was linked to higher risk of self-harm and unintentional opioid overdose. Continued use can also lead to Cannabis Induced Psychosis (CIP) as well as verbal, working memory, and executive function deficits. CIP can be an early indicator for the development of schizophrenia in nearly half of chronic psychotic cases, with adolescent cannabis exposure further increasing these risks. CIP can serve as an early marker of progression toward schizophrenia in nearly half of chronic psychotic cases, and these risks appear to be further elevated among individuals exposed to cannabis during adolescence. 

The increase in THC potency and the worrisome trend of increase in use presents a threat to those who are already at risk or have a lower perception of harm such as adolescents, young adults, pregnant individuals, people with bipolar disorders, people with psychotic disorders or have a family history of psychotic disorders. Regular cannabis use can worsen mania, other mental health outcomes, and reduce recovery from bipolar disorder.

In some studies of this review, adverse reactions between CBD, THC, and mental health medications were observed. It is important to note that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved the use of cannabis for pharmacological treatment.

The authors of this review recommend routine screening of cannabis use, including non-judgmental approaches when asking patients about cannabis use. These discussions should include potency, frequency of use, and education around synthetic cannabinoids as these lead to greater risk of harm. It is also important to educate patients about drug interactions, and the possibility of cannabis use worsening health outcomes. 

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

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

Submitted by Maggie Petito on behalf of DrugWatch International – 01 May 2026

Article published in London Telegraph- by  Max Stephens – International Crime Correspondent   

Concerns over damage to its international reputation prompt United Arab Emirates to finally take action against gangsters

    

Dubai was the perfect command post for the Kinahan crime family.

For 10 years, Christy Kinahan Sr, “The Dapper Don”, and his two sons, Daniel and Christy Jr, ran their £1bn cocaine empire from lavish flats on Palm Jumeirah, a man-made 1,380-acre archipelago built in the shape of a palm tree.

A network of corrupt officials allowed the cartel to wash dirty money with impunity through the city’s frenetic real estate market.

Despite a $5m (£3.8m) reward for his arrest offered by US authorities in 2022, Daniel Kinahan, the clan’s de facto leader, freely mingled with Europe’s most powerful drug lords at boxing tournaments and in Michelin-starred restaurants.

But on Oct 10 2024, things changed. Sean McGovern, Daniel Kinahan’s closest confidant and family consigliere, was arrested by Dubai Police.

Earlier this month, Daniel Kinahan himself was arrested, and is awaiting extradition to Ireland, where he faces organised crime-related offences. He is being detained in Al Awir Central Prison, nicknamed Dubai’s Alcatraz by former inmates.

Police and security sources revealed that the decision by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to tackle Dubai’s “Costa del Crime” only came about in the past two years because the reputational embarrassment was so acute that they could no longer strike trade deals with other countries.

The enclave of gangsters became an issue of “national interest” for the UAE, according to a former high-ranking British diplomat. Senior figures in the Abu Dhabi government held frequent meetings about the “reputational hits” they were suffering on the world stage.

“If you were someone [a trade official or diplomat] and went to somewhere like Albania or Ireland, it wasn’t great because all they wanted to talk about was that their worst criminals were going to bars in your city,” the former diplomat said.

“It’s a little bit more than just getting over a few bad headlines. The UAE can get over a few bad headlines; it was becoming a significant bilateral irritant.

“It had become an issue of national interest to change their approach. They were finding it hard to do business in lots of places.”

The diplomat added: “If you were an organised crime boss or a rich, successful criminal of some kind, until 2024, Dubai was the best place you could go to because they weren’t arresting people, unless there was a political motive to it.”

Analysts also pointed to the reputational fallout of the UAE being added to the “grey list” of the Financial Action Task Force, a global anti-money laundering watchdog, in 2022.

The grey list is a group of countries that have been judged as not doing enough to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. It took two years before investigators removed the UAE from the list.

Gangsters’ paradise

Dubai’s plethora of designer shops, lavish hotels, its status as a hub for gold trading and low cost of living had turned the emirate into a playground for gangsters.

Criminals flaunted their lifestyles on social media, posing in front of supercars and skyline penthouses.

The emirate’s ancestral “Hawala” banking system meant vast volumes of cash could be transferred without a trace. Authorities asked no questions about where the Kinahans’ funds came from.

The only proviso was that they kept their transatlantic drug and arms trafficking operations outside the UAE. The city was especially attractive for Balkan crime leaders.

An estimated two-thirds of Albania’s drug traffickers are believed to have fled to Dubai over the past decade, according to the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime.

Daniel Kinahan’s guest list for his wedding in 2017 at the “seven-star” Jumeirah Burj Al Arab hotel was almost a who’s who of Interpol’s most wanted.

The group included Edin Gačanin, a Bosnian drug lord known as “Europe’s Escobar”, Raffaele Imperiale, a high-ranking member of Italy’s Camorra linked to stolen Van Gogh paintings; Faissal Taghi, the son of a dual Dutch-Moroccan murderer; and Alejandro Salgado Vega, Spain’s biggest cocaine trafficker. An undercover informant who infiltrated and recorded the wedding on behalf of the US Drug Enforcement Administration confirmed law enforcement’s suspicions that the Kinahans and the group had banded together to form a “super cartel”.

Living the life of Riley

Police estimated that together the group controlled a third of all of Europe’s annual £14.8bn cocaine supply from South America. By 2026, all the kingpins had been either extradited from the UAE or arrested.

The turning point was the arrest of McGovern, who was the subject of an Interpol Red Notice, on Oct 10 2024.

A police source with intimate knowledge of McGovern’s arrest said: “What they [Dubai] started with is targeting those who were living ‘the life of Riley’.

“Those going to boxing matches, posting things on social media while having a Red Notice on them or being wanted, they felt it was disrespectful to Dubai.

“The arrest of McGovern opened the floodgates. They [the police] did it slowly, carefully, they didn’t communicate very much, it was all very sensitive.”

Assassination attempt

McGovern, 39, was extradited in May 2025 and is awaiting sentencing at Dublin’s Special Criminal Court, having pleaded guilty last month to two charges of directing the activities of a criminal organisation.

The Kinahans had relocated from their headquarters in Spain’s Marbella to Dubai following an assassination attempt on Daniel Kinahan on Feb 5 2016.

A group of gunmen disguised as Irish police opened fire on Kinahan and his retinue during the weigh-in of a world boxing match at the Regency Hotel in Dublin.

The attack was carried out by the rival Hutch Gang during a gangland war for control of Ireland’s underworld.

The gang’s alleged leader, 63-year-old Gerry Hutch, or “The Monk”, as he has been named by the Irish press for his ascetic lifestyle, is now running to be an independent candidate in the Dublin Central by-election.

Hutch has denied being an organised crime boss and has not been convicted as an adult. He had minor convictions for robbery as a child.

Gerry Hutch is hoping to win the Dublin Central by-election next month. In the aftermath of the shooting, 19 people were killed on the streets of Dublin, including two civilians in a case of mistaken identity.

While in Dubai, Mr Kinahan sought to rebrand himself as a boxing promoter and was credited by Tyson Fury, the former heavyweight world champion, for helping broker a match between him and Anthony Joshua.

Although the fight never materialised, Mr Kinahan was repeatedly lauded by the roster of world champion fighters signed to his company, MTK Global, for securing deals unmatched by competitors.

Bob Arum, a 94-year-old Las Vegas boxing tycoon whose promotional company Top Rank included Muhammad Ali, George Foreman and Floyd Mayweather Jr in its stable, described Mr Kinahan as his “captain” and said he had always been “honourable”.

MTK Global shut down in 2022, the same year that the US government imposed a $5m (£3.7m) bounty for information leading to Mr Kinahan’s arrest.

Mr Arum has since publicly distanced himself from Mr Kinahan and said that, if he were aware of his criminal activities, “he wouldn’t have touched him with a 10-foot pole”.

The family’s whereabouts in Dubai were well known by authorities, according to a police source.

He dismissed suggestions that a joint investigation from Bellingcat, the Dutch journalism website, and The Sunday Times, which exposed Christy Kinahan Sr’s whereabouts via his Google Reviews of restaurants under an alias, had assisted law enforcement.

Daniel Kinahan, 48, was arrested on foot by a squad of Dubai Police officers on April 15.

Hamid Alzaabi, the secretary-general of the UAE’s national anti-money laundering committee, in a rare public announcement, declared afterwards on social media: “There is no safe haven for criminals in the UAE.”

Dubai ‘under pressure to behave’

Daniel Haberly, a senior lecturer from the Centre for the Study of Corruption at the University of Sussex, said: “Dubai has a serious bid to become one of the real apex global financial centres in the long run.

“There is international pressure for them to behave; they have the same architecture of Western security, it’s not a rogue state. They have to play along.”

Mr Kinahan is being held in Al Awir Central Prison, a sprawling complex in the middle of a desert. The jail is a far cry from the splendour of his old residence, a 45-minute drive away.

Inmates have their heads shaved on arrival, something that Mr Kinahan, who is rumoured to have recently undergone a hair transplant, would feel particularly aggrieved about.

Dubai authorities also announced on Sunday that £168m of the family’s assets had been frozen.

Daniel Kinahan’s wife, Caoimhe Robinson, a property magnate reportedly living in a £5m mansion in the gated community of Hacienda with her four children, is said to be carrying out a fire sale of up to £1bn in assets.

She is not accused of wrongdoing. Meanwhile, Irish police are keeping close tabs on his younger brother Christy Kinahan Jr, 45, who supposedly runs the money-laundering side of operations and is reluctant to “get his hands dirty”.

The family’s patriarch, Christy Sr, who has been subject to the same US bounty as his two sons, has stepped back from the cartel’s day-to-day operations but remains in police crosshairs.

Where Europe’s criminal elite will now set up shop is unclear.

Security sources have pointed to Sudan or Moscow as potential havens, given their governments’ links to corruption and harbouring of fugitives, but said neither could hope to match the splendour of Dubai.

Source: www.drugwatch.org

Filed under: Crime/Violence/Prison,Culture,Latest News,UK,USA :

From: drug-watch-international@googlegroups.com <drug-watch-international@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of mlp3@starpower.net – Maggie Petito, who comments:

“The PCC and assorted cartels and rackets do now consolidate to enhance profits and control to better help fund their sponsors. This article, while informative, covers the eastern side and leaves mostly untouched the western side of South America.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

by  Samantha Pearson – Wall Street Journal – April 20, 2026

From arms dealing in Boston to pirate attacks in the Amazon, the PCC poses one of the greatest risks to international efforts to curb organized crime

A Brazilian gang, First Capital Command (PCC), is rapidly becoming a major global criminal organization, reshaping cocaine flows to the U.S.

SÃO PAULO—A Brazilian gang founded in the country’s violent prisons is fast becoming one of the world’s biggest criminal organizations, reshaping global cocaine flows from South America to Europe’s busiest ports and edging into the U.S.

Long under Washington’s radar, the First Capital Command, known by its Portuguese initials PCC, started out as a disgruntled band of inmates fighting for soap and toilet paper in the 1990s.  

It now has some 40,000 members behind bars and on the streets with a vast network of affiliates—making it the largest criminal group in the Americas by some estimates, operating in nearly 30 countries on every continent except Antarctica.

“The PCC has become a truly transnational group,” said Lincoln Gakiya, Brazil’s top PCC prosecutor, who has tracked its rise for two decades. “I believe it is now the fastest-growing criminal organization in the world.”

With the scale of Italian organized criminal groups and the efficiency of a multinational corporation, the PCC has helped drive record cocaine seizures in Europe and sparked violent turf wars in the heart of major ports in Belgium and the Netherlands. 

Prosecutors and police in Brazil are calling on President Trump to label the PCC a Foreign Terrorist Organization, joining more than a dozen other Latin criminal networks.

The PCC is organized crime at its most organized, prosecutors say. 

Unlike the narco-tycoons of Mexico, the heavily armed Colombian cocaine militias or the flashy drug lords of Rio de Janeiro’s Red Command gang, PCC members keep a low, businesslike profile, seeking fortune not fame—and shying away from the kinds of gratuitous violence that attract police and TV news crews. New recruits sign up to a strict internal code of conduct, their swearing-in ceremonies sometimes conducted by videoconference.

By adopting religious personas—pretending to be ministers—PCC figures have gone into far-flung regions of Brazil to gain the trust of locals and recruit new members, while securing routes to neighboring cocaine-producing countries.

Many evangelicals here embrace the so-called prosperity gospel—the belief that wealth signals divine favor—helping the gang make inroads in poor communities. In 2023, prosecutors in Brazil’s northern state of Rio Grande do Norte investigated a PCC cell accused of setting up at least seven churches to launder drug money—a practice now so common that authorities have a name for it: narco-Pentecostalism. 

Drug profits are also laundered through gas stations, fintechs, real-estate funds, sex motels, car dealerships and construction firms, police say. São Paulo authorities launched an operation against a Chinese-run criminal group in February that investigators say worked with PCC associates to launder more than $200 million through the sale of electronics.

Few crimes are outside the PCC’s reach. Members today are involved in everything from illegal gold mining and cargo theft to cybercrimes and the trafficking of exotic birds, according to dozens of interviews with state security officials.

Coming to America: Cocaine, though, remains the PCC’s core business and that means that the gang has also become America’s problem.

In an organization chart that São Paulo authorities have built there’s now a new category—“North American division.”

The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the PCC in 2021 and in 2024 froze the U.S. assets of Diego Gonçalves do Carmo, who laundered some $240 million for the PCC and continues to help run financial operations despite having been jailed in Brazil. 

U.S. authorities have since identified individuals affiliated with the PCC in Florida, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Tennessee. In Massachusetts, the U.S. Attorney’s Office last year announced charges against 18 Brazilians prosecutors say were linked to the PCC for trafficking handguns, rifles and shotguns—and, in one case, fentanyl.

“The PCC has forged a bloody path to dominance,” the Treasury Department said in a statement at the time of sanctions against Gonçalves do Carmo, calling it “one of the most significant narcotics trafficking organizations” in Latin America. 

Born in captivity: When the PCC was born in August 1993 inside the grimy walls of the Taubaté high-security prison in São Paulo state, its founders weren’t seeking world domination. 

They demanded better sanitation and beds, among other basics. Brazil’s prisons were slum-like infernos—some of the world’s most overcrowded and violent, plagued by tuberculosis and lice—and rights groups said guards routinely beat inmates. Resentment was simmering at Taubaté after 111 inmates had months earlier been killed when police crushed a rebellion at another prison not far away. Eight prisoners formed a pact of loyalty at Taubaté, vowing to protect each other against the guards. 

What then followed was one of the biggest policy mistakes in Latin American law enforcement history. 

Alarmed by the growing jailhouse fraternity, authorities tightened prison controls and transferred inmates to other states. This only accelerated the PCC’s national expansion and hardened its resolve. “Peace, justice and freedom” became the PCC’s rallying call, as it cast itself as a parallel power to a state whose abuses—from prison officials to politicians—help the gang draw recruits. 

Over the next three decades, the transferred inmates set up new PCC cells in prisons across the country and tightened their grip behind bars, both in Paraguay and Brazil, where thousands of active members remain in jail. The PCC assigns cells, distributes contraband and even produces its own prison rum, “Crazy Maria.”

The state has been unable to bring PCC inmates under control. The country’s chronically overcrowded and understaffed prisons struggle to enforce even basic rules such as bans on cellphones, enabling gang leaders to keep running criminal operations from their cells.

‘Tie brigade’: Inmates are recruited in exchange for legal help from its army of lawyers, known as “the tie brigade.” Those PCC members who disobey rules are punished through internal jailhouse trials, which can end in torture or execution, authorities say.

But the gang’s biggest expansion has been outside the prison walls—as the group set its sights on securing cocaine from the world’s three main producers—Colombia, Peru and Bolivia—at wholesale prices. 

That has brought the PCC to the world’s biggest rainforest, the Amazon.

The PCC is a household name in villages like Urucurituba, 1,600 miles north of São Paulo’s squalid jails, where the vast milky Madeira River cuts through the rainforest. 

Like many riverside communities, Urucurituba doesn’t have a resident doctor or even police officer. But it does now have its own drug dealer—several of them.

“We’re in the hands of the traffickers now,” said Jeffesson Ribeiro, who runs a small hotel by the pier, where drug gangs have started a soccer team to recruit young men.

Parallel justice system

With no police presence, the traffickers operate a parallel justice system in the village of some 500 families—punishing petty thieves and meting out brutal justice as they see fit, residents said. 

“They used to do things in hiding, now they fear no one,” said a worker at one of the village’s makeshift restaurants. During the night, locals sometimes hear the screams of those being tortured by the gang members, he said. 

The gang’s expansion cut out the middlemen who used to smuggle the drug into Brazil from largely remote and unchecked borders. 

PCC figures have battled for control of the Amazon rainforest—whose waterways connect with cocaine-producing countries—with the help of corrupt local authorities and by going so far as to pose as evangelical pastors spreading the word of God, said Marcus Vinícius Almeida, who just stepped down as public security secretary for Amazonas state.

Though churches oppose organized crime and offer themselves as a path out of gangs, the PCC offers recruits a future in a system “made for the poor by the poor,” said Bruno Manso, a foremost authority on the gang and co-author of “The War: The Rise of the PCC and the World of Crime in Brazil.” Manso said the PCC provides what recruits feel they can’t get elsewhere: escape from “the utter misery of urban life.”

The PCC’s move north hasn’t been easy. It cost it its longstanding truce with Rio’s Red Command gang and its local allies, setting off bloody turf battles across the forest from 2016 to today. To buttress its forces, the PCC has had to recruit renegade guerrillas who didn’t participate in a 2016 peace accord in Colombia, according to state prosecutors, gaining seasoned fighters and bomb makers as well as access to military-grade weapons. 

The efforts have paid off handsomely. Authorities estimate the PCC moves several tons each month though the Amazon, with many small cities and towns in the world’s largest rainforest now under the group’s control.

Trucks, river barges, light aircraft and helicopters carry cocaine through the dense jungle to the Atlantic coast, where it is smuggled aboard containerships to transit points in West Africa en route to growing markets in Europe, authorities say.  

Antwerp, Rotterdam and Hamburg are among the top destinations, where violence has spilled into the streets as the PCC’s local partners and others battle to carve up the cocaine trade. Grenade attacks, shootings, murders, torture and kidnappings have been documented by port police.

Like other large organized crime groups in Latin America, the PCC’s interest doesn’t just lie in drugs. In addition to mining gold, its members have branched into timber extraction, human trafficking, illegal fishing and poaching, and even the enslavement of some indigenous communities, said Almeida.  Europe, though, is the region where the PCC has found its most lucrative business opportunities.

Cocaine seizures in the European Union have now hit record highs for seven straight years, with the most recent figures showing 419 tons seized across member states in 2023, led by major entry hubs such as Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands. 

Much of that has sailed out of the Port of Santos just southeast of São Paulo, Latin America’s biggest container port.

Divers and welders have been arrested in recent years for hiding cocaine in the hulls of ships bound for Europe and Africa, in some cases packing as much as half a ton of the drug into underwater recessed chambers in the dead of night. 

Today, the PCC operates more like a marketplace or regulatory agency rather than a traditional organization—while eschewing a hierarchical structure like some cocaine gangs. “It became the government of the illegal world,” said Manso, the author who has written extensively on the PCC. No member is above the rules in a gang that lives by the importance of “equality” and “union,” but anyone can prosper as long as they remain loyal, said Manso. Free-market capitalism is a mantra.

“If you want to sell drugs to the Netherlands and you have capacity to do so, then you can,” he said. “If you want to launder money through a gas station, go for it…it’s a ‘government’ with a liberal mindset that allows everyone to earn money.”

That horizontal structure allows the PCC to expand rapidly without territorial control. In recent years it has repurposed port terminals and other logistical infrastructure and forged partnerships with Italy’s ’Ndrangheta, Japan’s Yakuza and Albanian and Serbian gangs in West Africa. Gakiya, the prosecutor, calls the alliances “criminal convergence.”.

Without the top-down hierarchy of other drug-trafficking groups, the PCC is harder to decapitate—so much so that it has flourished even though its longtime leader, Marcos Willians Herbas Camacho, known as Marcola, has been in jail since 1999. 

A former street thief who became an avid reader of Dante, Marcola has ordered killings and helped orchestrate the PCC’s transnational expansion, even marrying and fathering children behind bars. Yet, investigators say the group now doesn’t depend on any single leader.

Officials no longer talk about eliminating the PCC but managing its uneasy coexistence with the state—often leaving investigators frustrated or stunned by the links between gangsters and the state itself. 

Police in February arrested the operator of a multimillion-dollar fintech that authorities believe financed electoral campaigns in the 2024 municipal elections to secure garbage-collection contracts, bus concessions and fuel-supply deals.

Colonel Pedro Lopes, head of intelligence for São Paulo’s military police at the time of the vote, said the PCC’s infiltration of politics across Brazil’s wealthiest state had taken even the most experienced investigators by surprise. “It’s so much bigger than I thought.”

Source:  www.drugwatch.org

Filed under: Cocaine,Crime/Violence/Prison,Latest News,Prevalence,USA :

St. Louis on the Air Podcast Cover

By Danny Wicentowski – Published April 21, 2026 at 11:18 a.m. CDT

Although kratom products are legal and unregulated in Missouri, they are facing scrutiny on multiple fronts.

That pressure reached a new height last month when state Attorney General Catherine Hanaway announced a sweeping lawsuit against Kansas City-based CBD American Shaman. The lawsuit says the company is violating Missouri law by knowingly marketing and selling addictive products that contain the kratom compound 7-OH.

“7-OH, put simply, is a synthetic opioid that is being distributed over the counter in Missouri,” Hanway said during a press conference on March 31. “We believe it is deadly.”

But treating kratom like a dangerous opioid isn’t so simple, said addiction prevention specialist Jenny Armbruster. She leads the substance abuse prevention nonprofit PreventEd, which has been following the use of kratom for nearly a decade.

Unlike opioids, kratom products are widely available in stores, gas stations and smoke shops, often advertised as energy boosters. That access, Armbruster said, creates the perception that kratom isn’t harmful. The availability also sparked many questions from users, some of whom believed they could use kratom to kick addictions to other drugs — leading to a spiral of addiction.

“They might be thinking that they were using a product that [did] not necessarily have the same type of dependence or addiction,” Armbruster noted, “and then finding themselves in a place where they are struggling.”

The challenge of regulating kratom is complicated by the differences in the products themselves. Not all kratom contains the same amount of 7-OH. Some kratom companies have sought to distance themselves from the compound and the related products under legal fire.

That includes CBD Kratom, a company that operates 14 retail stores in the St. Louis area. A blog post on its website last summer asserted that it does not sell “or endorse” any products with added or isolated 7-OH. The post noted, “While 7‑OH is a natural metabolite found in kratom, we only offer full-spectrum, natural kratom products.”

As in Missouri, kratom remains legal in most U.S. states. Kansas recently banned kratom 7-OH products. In Missouri, the City of Rolla made it illegal to sell products with the compound last month.

While Armbruster supports laws that prohibit kratom sales to minors, she cautioned, “There are still a lot of unanswered questions about the long-term impact of these types of products.”

“We don’t want to villainize people who are using substances, and there can be ways that any of these products might be beneficial,” she said. “The issue is that we just don’t know that for certain; there has not been widespread studies on different symptoms, [the] appropriate dosage or amount that someone might use.”

The future of kratom is uncertain in Missouri. Lawmakers this session considered a bill to restrict kratom sales to people 21 and older and outlawing products that mimic candy or appeal to children. The legislation ultimately stalled in the Senate.

Regardless of its legal status, kratom is already making an impact. For Armbruster, the challenge is reaching the most vulnerable potential users — children and adolescents.

“When we look at the availability and the advertisements of these products, that’s really where our concern lies,” she said. “We know young people. The earlier they start using a substance, the more likely they are to suffer lifelong consequences related to substance use disorder.”

Source: https://www.stlpr.org/show/st-louis-on-the-air/2026-04-21/kratom-legal-reckoning-missouri-drug-abuse-prevention-specialist-concern-lawsuit

Filed under: Kratom,Latest News,Synthetics,USA :

— By Sherri Buri McDonald, University Communications UNIVERSITY OF OREGON-  

Students reported problems remembering, paying attention and making decisions the next day

When college students drink very heavily or to the point of blacking out, they’re more likely to report poorer cognitive functioning the next day, like forgetting someone’s name or having trouble making decisions, according to new research from the University of Oregon.

The findings, published in Alcohol, Clinical and Experimental Research, are important because heavy drinking is common among young adults, yet many don’t realize its negative effects for both the short- and long-term, said one of the study’s lead authors, Ashley Linden-Carmichael, an associate professor in the Department of Counseling Psychology and Human Services in the UO College of Education.

Young adults who drink heavily often assume that once they sober up, everything returns to normal. It doesn’t, the research shows.

“We’re seeing in this study that heavy drinking can affect functioning the next day,” Linden-Carmichael said. “Students could have a harder time with their schoolwork, going to a job or navigating friendships, and that could have big implications for their mental health.”

Young adults age 18-25 report the highest rates of heavy alcohol use among all age groups, and about 5.1 million young adults in the United States met the criteria for alcohol-use disorder in 2023, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. About half of young adults who drink reported at least one instance when they drank to the point of blacking out, studies show.

“When someone is blacking out, they’re continuing to navigate the world, but they’re not processing information or making and storing memories, which can lead to making decisions they normally wouldn’t, increasing the risk for physical injury and sexual assault,” Linden-Carmichael said.

Linden-Carmichael, who is also part of the UO’s Prevention Science Institute, co-authored the study with Jacqueline Mogle of RTI Health Solutions in North Carolina. Other researchers included Jennifer Shipley, also with the Prevention Science Institute, and Sara Miller and Stephen Wilson, both with Penn State University.

The researchers wanted to explore this subject after they saw another research team’s study that included scans showing short-term impacts on the brains of young adults who drank heavily at a 21st birthday event. The effects on the brain were even more pronounced if the person had blacked out.

“We wanted to know whether young people were aware of these effects and if they actually noticed any changes in their cognitive functioning after a night of heavy drinking,” Linden-Carmichael said.

The UO study is the first to track participants over several weeks, surveying them on their cognitive functioning the day after consuming no alcohol, a moderate amount or a large amount. Participants reported their memory lapses, difficulties paying attention or problems making decisions the day after drinking heavily, some to the point of blacking out.

Those moments of self-realization could one day be an ideal time to deliver personalized health education or motivational messages, known as “just-in-time interventions,” through an app to a person’s mobile phone, Linden-Carmichael said. The intervention could provide real-time feedback and help participants connect their current cognitive struggles with yesterday’s heavy drinking, she said.

The researchers appreciated participants’ extensive level of involvement in the study, which set it apart from previous efforts, Linden-Carmichael said.

Prior studies on heavy drinking by young adults tended to follow them for a week or so. The UO study took a longer view, examining drinking on one day and cognitive functioning the next for 304 college students over a 21-day period between November 2023 and May 2024.

To enroll in the study, students had to report a history of heavy drinking at least twice in a typical month and at least one instance in the past year of blackout drinking, defined as not remembering what they did during a drinking episode. Heavy drinking was defined as consuming at least four drinks in a sitting for women and five for men.

The study included both subjective and objective measures of cognition. Each day, researchers texted participants with surveys every two hours between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., asking them to report the previous day’s happenings, and their current temperament and cognition. They had an hour to complete each survey plus a “brain game,” or cognitive task. In one task, participants tried to recall increasingly longer strings of numbers in the reverse order that they had been presented. Participants were scored based on how many numbers they recalled correctly.

The researchers found that any alcohol consumption was linked to a 14% greater likelihood of cognitive lapses the next day compared with no drinking, and each additional drink on a given day was associated with a 5% increase in likelihood of cognitive lapses the next day.

“But the biggest effects were when they drank at very high levels, or when they were blacking out,” Linden-Carmichael said.

High-intensity drinking, more than eight drinks in a sitting for women, or 10 for men, was associated with twice the likelihood of reporting cognitive lapses the next day. Blackout drinking was linked to a 40% greater likelihood of cognitive lapses the next day.

Linden-Carmichael next hopes to examine the role of sleep as a protective factor for young adults who drink heavily or black out and to explore the cognitive effects after consecutive days of heavy drinking or blacking out. She also is conducting research on the effects on young adults of using alcohol and cannabis together.

Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1125402

Filed under: Alcohol,Brain and Behaviour,Education,Environment,Latest News,USA,Youth :

 

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill raises the legal age for buying tobacco by one ⁠year, every year, starting with people born on or after January 1, 2009, meaning affected age groups face a lifetime ⁠ban.

The law, which is due to receive ‌royal assent next week, also tightens controls on vaping, including banning sales of vaping and nicotine products to under‑18s and restricting advertising, displays, free distribution and discounting.

“Children ​in the ‌UK will be part of the first smoke-free ‌generation, protected from a lifetime of addiction and harm,” he said.

Smoking causes about ‌64,000 deaths and 400,000 hospital ⁠admissions a year in England, according to ​official estimates, and costs the NHS around 3 ‌billion pounds ($4 billion) annually, with wider economic costs exceeding 20 billion pounds.

TIGHTER RULES ON VAPING

Vaping has also become a focus for policymakers, especially over concerns about youth uptake and nicotine addiction.

The new legislation will tighten those rules, with ministers gaining powers to regulate the flavours and ‌packaging of tobacco, vaping and ​nicotine products through secondary legislation.

Around 10% of adults in Great Britain – an estimated 5.5 million people – use vapes, according to health charity Action on Smoking and Health, with levels broadly unchanged since ⁠2024, suggesting growth has begun to plateau.

Source: https://www.medscape.com/s/viewarticle/uk-lawmakers-approve-lifetime-smoking-ban-todays-under-18s-2026a1000cqo?

 

Filed under: Age-related,Latest News,Tobacco, smoking,UK,Vaping,Youth :

by   JON MICHAEL RAASCH, US POLITICAL REPORTER  –  Daily Mail –  23 April 2026

“Cannabis stock prices jumped on Wednesday after Axios first reported that the administrative change could be coming within days. 

Canopy Growth Corp stock spiked over 20 percent, while Tilray’s stock price jumped up 15 percent. 

The change would reshape the cannabis industry by enabling companies in the space to more easily secure loans and funding that have previously been stifled due to strict federal regulations. 

It would also lower the tax burdens on cannabis companies.”

Marijuana rackets get lower taxes and USA banking BEFORE any “new” research they claim is needed is completed??????

Donald Trump has moved to reclassify cannabis following a months-long federal review of the drug and its current restrictions.

The President’s acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order reclassifying state-licensed medical marijuana on Thursday. 

He said the effort was ‘delivering on President Trump’s promise’ to expand medical options for Americans. 

‘This rescheduling action allows for research on the safety and efficacy of this substance, ultimately providing patients with better care and doctors with more reliable information,’ Blanche’s statement said. 

The shift marks a significant step toward loosening federal barriers on marijuana.

The order establishes a system for marijuana producers to register with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and helps legitimize the 40 medical cannabis programs within the states that have passed laws adopting the shops. 

Trump ordered the review in December, targeting cannabis’s Schedule I designation – a category reserved for drugs like heroin, LSD, and ecstasy. The reclassification is expected to ease limits on research and expand legal use.

‘The Administration continues to expeditiously implement President Trump’s December executive order to increase medical marijuana research to close the gap between current medical marijuana use and medical knowledge,’ a White House official told the Daily Mail on Wednesday.

The official said ‘specifics related to possible reclassification’ would come from the Department of Justice. The DOJ did not respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment. 

The Drug Enforcement Administration is planning to announce an administrative hearing on the rescheduling, two people familiar with the matter told the Washington Post. 

The administration’s plan would move to classify cannabis as a Schedule III substance, which is the same category as prescription painkillers, ketamine and anabolic steroids. 

However, rescheduling cannabis is broadly unpopular among congressional Republicans.

‘Reclassifying Marijuana does NOTHING to lower the cost of health insurance premiums,’ former Trump ally and Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene fumed on Thursday after the announcement.

‘We are soon entering the bankruptcy phase of our nation and Democrats’ answer will be throw more taxpayer money that we don’t have to solve the problems and Trump’s answer is give them marijuana, they will all be too high to notice they’re broke,’ she added. 

Shortly after Trump announced in December that he was prioritizing rescheduling, 22 GOP Senators and 26 Republican House members sent letters urging the President against the effort. 

‘We don’t need rescheduling to do medical research on marijuana- all we are doing is exposing more of our youth to an addictive drug,’ Congressman Andy Harris, chairman of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, said at the time. 

But Trump fought back against claims that the reclassification effort would lead to additional drug use. Additionally, the President himself has long abstained from drinking alcohol or using drugs. 

‘I always told my kids don’t take drugs,’ Trump said, telling America’s youth to ‘just don’t do it.’

‘It doesn’t legalize marijuana in any way, shape or form,’ he said. ‘And in no way sanctions its use for a recreational drug,’ Trump said during his December announcement. 

The president pointedly repeated his opposition to the use of illegal drugs. Kim Rivers, the CEO of cannabis dispensary Trulieve, lobbied Trump for months to get the regulatory rollback. 

Her organization donated to Trump, attended fundraisers and raised the rescheduling issue with White House aides repeatedly before the President sided with her. 

‘It was a little surreal,’ she told the Wall Street Journal of her successful effort resulting in Trump’s decision to reclassify the plant. 

Senior administration officials described the December order as the president keeping his 2024 campaign promise.

Trump announced support for rescheduling the drug in 2024 to allow ‘research to unlock the medical uses of marijuana’ even though he expressed his desire to ban its use in public spaces to prevent the smell from affecting cities.

Cannabis stock prices jumped on Wednesday after Axios first reported that the administrative change could be coming within days. 

Canopy Growth Corp stock spiked over 20 percent, while Tilray’s stock price jumped up 15 percent. 

The change would reshape the cannabis industry by enabling companies in the space to more easily secure loans and funding that have previously been stifled due to strict federal regulations. 

It would also lower the tax burdens on cannabis companies.  

Source: www.drugwatch.org

Filed under: Cannabis/Marijuana,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Marijuana and Medicine,Prevalence,USA :
WZZM

by Michael Martin –  April 24, 2026

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is stepping out from behind the scenes, teaming up with West Michigan students to rethink how drug prevention messages are delivered.

Students from Reeths-Puffer High School visited the DEA’s Grand Rapids office Friday, leading hands-on simulations designed to show how drug impairment impacts reaction time and decision-making.

“Kids don’t really understand what’s really happening unless they experience a simulation of it and what it’s really like,” sophomore Ryan Gordon told 13 ON YOUR SIDE Friday morning.

During three exercises designed in part by the students, participants attempted simple tasks while wearing goggles that simulate being drunk or high or both. The effects quickly turning routine movements into disorienting challenges.

The student group, Straight Talk About Tough Stuff (STATS), regularly brings those demonstrations into Muskegon County middle schools.

“Kids, I feel, learn better from other students,” Gordon said.

That approach is what drew the DEA into the unique partnership.

“For many years, DEA has been known for the enforcement side,” Assistant Special Agent in Charge Derek Ress said Friday. “We’re really trying to build that community outreach… getting that awareness out at the ground level.”

The agency says that shift comes as the drug landscape continues to evolve. While fentanyl overdoses have recently declined, Ress says new synthetic drugs are emerging, in some cases making overdoses harder to reverse with tools like Narcan.

“Fentanyl is only two milligrams… That’s all it takes for an overdose,” Ress explained. “You’re really gambling with your life.”

For students involved, the goal is simple: make the message stick.

“It’s important for kids to understand what they’re putting in their body and how it can affect their life,” Gordon said.

Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/students-drugs-west-mi-high-211101739.html?

Filed under: Drug use-various effects on foetus, babies, children and youth,Education,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,USA,Youth :

Submitted by Maggie Petito on behalf of drugwatch international
14 April 2026 

Of late, numerous marijuana advocates state in the media that legalization for all marijuana is needed so that research can be done to determine marijuana’s effects. Recognition of who is advancing the argument indicates much about the quality of the argument -Maggie Petito

Washington Post article: by Sarah Klein – 14 April 2026:

As more states legalize recreational marijuana use, here’s what the research says about what cannabis is really doing to your brain.

Marijuana use seems to be more popular (or at least more openly talked about) than ever. Regardless of whether you’re on the gummy bandwagon, you might wonder how it really affects your brain after the buzz wears off.

About 15.4 percent of Americans older than 12 have used cannabis in the past month, according to 2024 data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. That number has been increasing as new marijuana products hit the market and more states legalize its use, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Older adults — those 60 and older — are the fastest-growing group of cannabis users in the country. According to a 2022 study, adults over 60 who started using did so for medical reasons, including to treat pain and arthritis, sleep disturbances, anxiety and depression.

While more than three-quarters of those people found the cannabis either somewhat or very helpful, the question remains: What are the side effects? You may be particularly curious about brain effects, given concerns about cognitive decline. So what exactly does the research say?

Cannabis use is linked to worse working memory

This probably isn’t too surprising, but cannabis can affect your ability to retain information in the short term. This makes some intuitive sense to anyone who has tried it: “If you smoke cannabis, afterward, if you do a working memory test where you’re trying to maintain some piece of information, like a phone number or a short list of words, you’re less good at doing that while you’re acutely intoxicated,” said Joseph Schacht, associate professor of psychiatry and co-director of the Division of Addiction Science, Prevention and Treatment at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

But lifetime use seems to have a similar effect. Consistent cannabis users tend to have lasting memory deficits compared with nonusers, he said. In a January 2025 study in JAMA Network Open, the largest of its kind, researchers looked at the effects of cannabis use on more than 1,000 adults ages 22 to 36 using brain imaging. Heavy lifetime users exhibited lower brain activity during a working memory task compared with nonusers after excluding recent users.

There isn’t much research on potential long-term memory effects, but it’s a growing area of study as more older adults use cannabis. “Essentially baby boomers who grew up using cannabis are [now] using it in older age but experiencing some of those effects on working memory,” Schacht said. Available research suggests no overarching association between cannabis use and cognitive decline or dementia risk, although larger and longer studies are needed on this topic.

It’s tied to changes in brain volume

Long-term cannabis use has also been associated with changes in brain volume. This is most pronounced in people who started using cannabis in adolescence, when the brain was still developing. “Cannabinoid exposure during that developmental window probably interferes with some of those normal brain development functions,” Schacht said.

Some research shows changes in the white matter of the brain in people who started using cannabis before the age of 16. White matter connects and facilitates communication among various regions of the brain. Younger users show more difficulty with cognitive tasks requiring executive function, such as inhibition control, linked to lower integrity of certain parts of white matter and higher behavioral impulsivity, said Staci Gruber, director of Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Gruber is the study’s lead author.

In a 2026 meta-analysis of 77 studies in the journal Addiction, cannabis use was linked with reduced volume in the amygdala in particular, a region of the brain involved in processing and regulating emotions. But this study didn’t include information on when people started using the drug.

In adults ages 40 to 70 who began using cannabis after roughly 25 years of age, lifetime cannabis use is actually associated with greater brain volume, according to research published this year in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. That’s particularly true in areas of the brain with receptors for cannabinoids, the active compounds in cannabis that modulate things such as pain, mood and appetite. The study authors concluded this may be a sign of the “neuroprotective” benefits of cannabis in older adults, given that brain atrophy is common with age and is linked to cognitive decline and lower quality of life.

Those neuroprotective benefits could at least partly explain why cannabis use isn’t associated with dementia risk.

We need more data on how cannabis affects mood disorders

In a review in Lancet Psychiatry, researchers found no help or harm from specific cannabinoids with relation to a number of mood-related concerns, including anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. It also concluded there wasn’t enough data to study any potential effects on bipolar disorder or depression.

Gruber, however, noted that the study looked at either THC alone, CBD alone or a combination of THC and CBD, not the potential risks and benefits of the entire cannabis plant. (THC, or delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, is the psychoactive cannabinoid associated with the high caused by marijuana, while CBD, or cannabidiol, is a nonintoxicating cannabis compound.) “The idea that we would look primarily at single extracted compounds for things like anxiety is one that isn’t necessarily going to be as successful as when we look at multi-compound products,” she said. “The synergistic action of these things all together is significantly greater than the sum of its parts,” much like how sports teams are more successful with multiple players on the field.

Schacht notes that some people use cannabis as a way to mitigate symptoms without addressing the underlying cause. “As someone who has worked in addiction and substance use for a number of years, depression and anxiety are frequently reasons that people use a number of substances, such as cannabis, alcohol and nicotine,” he said. “Those drugs can be helpful in relieving those symptoms in the short term, but over the long term, I think it’s fairly clear that they are not helpful and, in some cases, actually exacerbate the problem that led people to turn to them in the first place.”

Using marijuana as a teenager or young adult is linked to a greater risk of some serious mental health problems. “People who start using cannabis when they are young and who have any kind of a family history of psychosis or severe mental illness are at risk for developing psychosis and severe mental illness themselves because of the cannabis use,” Schacht said. The greatest association with psychosis and other severe mental illnesses is also typically strongest in the heaviest cannabis users.

Ultimately, Gruber said, more studies are needed — both larger studies and those that focus on the entire cannabis plant.

And, yet, researching cannabis is challenging because it is categorized federally as a Schedule I drug, meaning that, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, it has “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” The risk of abuse decreases as the schedule number gets higher. The government’s strict regulations on studying these substances limit research opportunities. “It would be so much easier if people could use those things in the laboratory, for example, but we can’t generally do that,” Schacht said.

That would also help researchers investigate whether the method of cannabis delivery matters. More research is needed to know whether smoking, vaping or oral administration make any difference in cognitive (or other) effects.

Age matters when it comes to problematic cannabis use

To many people, other Schedule I drugs such as heroin and LSD sound much more concerning. But research suggests that 22 percent to 30 percent of people who use cannabis have cannabis use disorder, a type of substance use problem.

The risk of developing cannabis use disorder is higher in people who start using marijuana in adolescence and use it frequently. “It doesn’t mean that every single person who uses cannabis at an early age is going to have a problem, but our work and the work of others demonstrates that earlier onset of recreational cannabis use, along with more frequent and higher magnitude of use, is usually associated with worse potential outcomes,” Gruber said.

To her, future research should focus on whether the potential therapeutic benefits of cannabis can be harnessed without increasing the risk of harm to improve upon current standards of care. It will take time for research to catch up to the increasing popularity of this plant, Gruber said, but that very popularity points to some benefit: “If people didn’t yield something from it, why would they keep using this?”

In the meantime, without more research, it can be challenging for some people to decide whether cannabis might benefit them. “The best thing we can hope for is good, sound, empirical data that helps to drive individuals’ decisions as opposed to hearing somebody say ‘That should never be used,’” Gruber said. If you’re concerned about a specific aspect of your brain health, such as dementia risk, and how cannabis may affect you, consider talking to your doctor before trying legal products.

Source: www.drugwatch.org

Filed under: Cannabis/Marijuana,Culture,Drug use-various effects,Drugs and Accidents,Latest News,Marijuana and Medicine,Prevention and Intervention,Strategy and Policy,Treatment and Addiction,USA,Youth :

UConn Today – Research & Discovery

by Olivia Drake – April 13, 2026

 School of Social Work Ph.D Candidate Elizabeth “Liz” Goldsborough stresses that social work education should include competency-based tobacco treatment training
Declining smoking rates in the United States tell a story of public health progress—but not for everyone.

“So many times, tobacco treatment doesn’t get addressed and those with mental health conditions and substance use disorders continue to smoke at much higher rates,” explains UConn School of Social Work doctoral candidate Elizabeth “Liz” Jurczak Goldsborough. “Treating tobacco use alongside other substance use is a more holistic approach to care and can improve both quality of life and longevity of the groups that social workers serve.”

Goldsborough, who is also a predoctoral fellow in the NIH/NIDA-funded Behavioral Sciences Training in Drug Abuse Research (BST) program at New York University, focuses her research on the intersection of tobacco use and substance use treatment—an area she says is often overlooked.

Understanding the Bigger Picture

In a recent study, “Examining the bidirectional relationship between food insecurity and cigarette smoking: Evidence from a cross-lagged panel analysis,” published in the American Journal of Health Promotion, 2026, Goldsborough and her colleagues examined the relationship between food insecurity and cigarette smoking among mothers participating in the collaborative Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study.

Their goal was to better understand a long-observed connection: does spending money on cigarettes contribute to food insecurity, or does the stress of food insecurity lead to increased smoking?

“What we found was that it’s not smoking causing food insecurity—or food insecurity causing smoking,” Goldsborough explains. “This widely observed link may instead be explained by underlying poverty, financial stress, and mental health challenges, since both depression and economic hardship affect food access and smoking behavior.”

The findings highlight a more complex reality—one in which structural factors, rather than individual choices alone, shape health outcomes.

Improving Treatment in Practice

That systems-level perspective carries into Goldsborough’s dissertation, tentatively titled “Tobacco Treatment Practices in Substance Use Care Settings: Provider and Organizational Factors.” Her research examines how treatment programs address tobacco use—an often-overlooked component of substance use care.

Despite strong evidence supporting integrated treatment, she found that tobacco care is not consistently implemented by behavioral health providers in Connecticut.

In a survey of 374 providers, more than 87% reported offering tobacco treatment at least some of the time. However, many also reported gaps in knowledge, attitudes, and confidence—factors that influence how often they provide care.

“These are things we can change,” Goldsborough says. “If we improve training, build provider confidence, and create supportive organizational policies, we can strengthen how tobacco treatment is delivered.”

She emphasizes that social work education should include competency-based tobacco treatment training, while agencies should adopt clear policies that support evidence-based care.

From Practice to Research

Goldsborough’s commitment to improving systems is rooted in her own experience. A first-generation college student, she grew up in Poland and New York City. After earning her MSW from Rutgers University, she worked as a medical social worker and later as a clinical research counselor—experiences that shaped her interest in research.

Source: https://today.uconn.edu/2026/04/the-overlooked-addiction-uconn-researcher-targets-tobacco-use-in-substance-use-care/

 

Filed under: Addiction,Brain and Behaviour,Latest News,Nicotine,Prevention and Intervention,Tobacco, smoking,Treatment and Addiction,USA :

 

It is tempting to oversimplify the causes of addiction and even the ways that people recover from it. But Flanagan calls addiction “psychobiosocial,” a word which begins to get at the complexity of its causes. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to reducing addiction. But, according to some recent research, religion can help.

Researchers at prominent universities including Harvard and Stanford conducted a meta-analysis of 55 longitudinal studies, which collectively included more than half a million participants. They found that there was a “significant protective association,” related to both prevention and recovery, between spirituality and usage of alcohol and other drugs.

They found only positive results from religious involvement, no detrimental ones, when it came to substance use.

This will not be news to many, of course. Twelve-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous have long relied on ideas about a “higher power” and communal support in order to help their members achieve sobriety. Even people like journalist Katie Herzog, who did not find AA particularly useful in her initial attempts to quit drinking and who ended up using medication to get sober, eventually went back to AA because it helped her find social supports for the long term.

Of course, it’s not only that religious communities provide a sense of purpose and meaning and that they offer a community. Religion also supports other structures — like stable families — that also make drug abuse less likely. Religion generally encourages marriage and childbearing, but also provides rituals for families to spend time together whether at a house of worship or at home.

One question that readers will reasonably ask is whether correlation can tell us anything about causation. Are religious people simply less likely to engage in substance use because they also come from environments that frown on it or because they believe that a higher power doesn’t want them to use? It is hard to say, particularly with recovery programs. Some research suggests that AA is no more effective than any other treatment program.

When it comes to child-rearing, however, the results are remarkably consistent. Last year, I interviewed Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford, who also happens to be one of the co-authors of the new JAMA study. He and a colleague had previously conducted a study and found that if you wanted to predict whether a child would have a drug problem, the No. 1 factor was, Humphreys told me, “not race or income or education or even parents’ drug use.” It’s whether they are “being raised in religious home.”
Comments

The largest effects were found in Jewish, Latter-day Saint and Muslim homes. The findings, he said, resulted in “multiple academics getting really angry.” He says that these findings about the positive impacts of religion “makes a certain type of person uncomfortable.”

The JAMA authors make clear that the government obviously shouldn’t be involved in the promotion of a particular religious viewpoint, but government is not the only agent that can help with our addiction crisis. Health professionals, for instance, can ask, “Are religion or spirituality important to you in thinking about health or illness at other times?” and “Do you have, or would you like to have, someone to talk about religious or spiritual matters?”

They note that while not all clinicians will be able to relate to religious involvement, “they can acknowledge their value as part of patient-centered care.” Indeed, the tendency of some to shy away from these findings, that is “not encouraging such community participation,” the authors note, “may potentially neglect an important health resources that supports people in a time of need.”

(An author of multiple books, Naomi is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at the Independent Women’s Forum)

Source: https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2026/04/11/spirituality-religion-addiction-recovery-study/

 

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

 

 

 

(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 :

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