The Log
Archive
733 stories, newest first.
June 2026
- Jun 25Policy & Funding
The Pharmacy Down the Block Could Save Your Life. Congress Has Been Keeping It Out of Reach.
Sen. Markey reintroduced the Modernizing Opioid Treatment Access Act on June 25, 2026 — a bill that would let board-certified addiction medicine doctors prescribe methadone for pharmacy pickup. Here's why the 1974 law blocking it has cost more lives than it's saved.
- Jun 24Science & Medicine
What are marijuana's effects?
The endocannabinoid system is one of the most important — and least understood — biological systems in addiction medicine. Here's how THC works, why high-potency products change the risk equation, and what two new Lancet studies say about the gap between cannabis marketing and cannabis science.
- Jun 24Harm Reduction
SAMHSA Harm Reduction Resources
Open Forum Infectious Diseases published multidisciplinary guidance for treating xylazine-associated skin wounds—the non-healing ulcers that are becoming one of the most visible clinical signatures of the fentanyl+xylazine supply. Here's what the protocol says and why it matters.
- Jun 24Policy & Funding
Compass Pathways COMP360 FDA Priority Review
Oregon's Measure 109 has produced 100+ licensed psilocybin service centers. Colorado's psychedelic decriminalization expanded. Twenty-two states are studying similar frameworks, and a rolling FDA NDA is coming for COMP360 in Q4 2026.
- Jun 24Policy & Funding
SAMHSA Announces $40 Million in Funding Opportunities
HHS Secretary Kennedy's STREETS program delivers $96M to eight pilot communities for MAT and recovery services. A breakdown of what's in it—and what it doesn't cover.
- Jun 24Science & Medicine
Phase I Mitragynine Safety Trial (NCT)
NIH received FDA IND approval to run the first human safety trial of mitragynine, a purified kratom alkaloid, in people with recent opioid use history. This is not the kratom debate—it's a pharmacology story.
- Jun 24Lived Experience & Community
HHS Opioid Crisis Statistics
The collapse of Addiction Recovery Care, which once controlled 67% of Kentucky's treatment beds, exposes how Medicaid billing fraud hollows out the therapeutic process—and what that means for patients who trusted the system to save them.
- Jun 23Policy & Funding
Designer Xanax Goes Schedule I: The DEA Made History. Whether It Made Anyone Safer Is a Different Question.
The DEA's April 2026 Schedule I placement of five designer benzos is the first time any benzodiazepine has been classified alongside heroin. Here's what it gets right, what it gets wrong, and what it means for the people most at risk.
- Jun 23Harm Reduction
People in Drug Treatment Smoke at 4x the General Rate. It's Been an Afterthought for Decades.
Smoking rates among people in substance use treatment are 2–4x the general population, accounting for nearly a quarter of premature deaths in this group. The field's silence on this is a policy failure.
- Jun 23Science & Medicine
Psilocybin Achieved 30% Complete Cocaine Abstinence. The Placebo Got Zero.
UAB's psilocybin-cocaine RCT: 30% complete abstinence vs. 0% in placebo at 180 days. What the results actually say, and what they don't.
- Jun 23Policy & Funding
The Treatment That Halved Overdose Deaths Is Under Attack From the People Supposed to Protect It
The SAMHSA 'Dear Colleague' letter, the Michael Stuart appointment, and H.R. 5629 are three moves in the same direction: a philosophical war on evidence-based MOUD that the science settled twenty years ago.
- Jun 22Treatment & Recovery
The Seven-in-a-Hundred Problem: Alcohol Kills as Many Americans as Fentanyl, and 93 Percent Never Get Treatment
Alcohol kills roughly 105,000 Americans per year. Only 7% of people with alcohol use disorder ever receive treatment. A new class of medications — GLP-1 receptor agonists — shows the clearest efficacy signal in decades. The obstacles to reaching the other 93% are not scientific.
- Jun 22Harm Reduction
Eight Weeks Without Federal Test Strip Funding: What Harm Reduction Programs Look Like Now
Eight weeks after SAMHSA banned federal funding for fentanyl test strips on April 24, harm reduction programs across the country are operating with dramatically reduced capacity. State-level responses have been uneven, and the populations hardest to reach are being cut off first.
- Jun 22The Crisis, By the Numbers
FDA Gave ZYN Twenty Flavors in January. Teen Nicotine Addiction Is Getting Worse.
FDA authorized ZYN in 20 flavor varieties in January 2026 and approved more flavored e-cigarettes in May. Data shows 29% of teen vapers now vape daily — up from 15% in 2020 — and failed quit attempts among teen daily vapers have nearly doubled.
- Jun 22Policy & Funding
The Five-Year Cutoff: CMS Told People in Long-Term Recovery They May Be Too Recovered to Stay Covered
The CMS interim final rule issued June 1 restricts the behavioral health exemption from Medicaid's new 80-hour work requirement. People in recovery for five or more years may no longer qualify — a cutoff that addiction medicine specialists say has no clinical basis.
- Jun 21Arizona Watch
Arizona Has 30,000 Active Meth Cases and No Plan to Pay for the Only Proven Treatment
Arizona's AHCCCS serves more than 29,000 meth and stimulant cases a year — but has not filed the Section 1115 waiver that would allow Medicaid to cover contingency management.
- Jun 21Policy & Funding
The Big Beautiful Bill Passed. Here's What Happens to 11 Million People in the Behavioral Health System.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act cut $1 trillion from Medicaid over ten years. For 48 million Americans with substance use disorders who rely on Medicaid, this is not abstract.
- Jun 21Science & Medicine
The Ozempic Question: A 600,000-Person Study Just Changed the Addiction Medicine Conversation
A new study of 600,000 veterans links GLP-1 drugs like semaglutide to dramatically lower rates of substance use disorder and overdose — across every substance class studied.
- Jun 21Science & Medicine
The Brain After Meth: Why Craving Is Not a Character Flaw and Relapse Is Not Failure
Methamphetamine doesn't just create a habit — it restructures the reward system. Understanding the neuroscience of meth craving explains why recovery is so difficult.
- Jun 21Treatment & Recovery
For the First Time in Decades, Stimulants Kill More Americans Than Opioids. The Treatment System Has No Answer.
Stimulant deaths now surpass opioid-only overdoses. But the treatment system has no FDA-approved medication for meth or cocaine — and the one intervention that works, contingency management, is barely funded.
- Jun 20Lived Experience & Community
No Pill, No Shot, No Patch: The People Left Behind by the Cocaine Treatment Desert
There are zero FDA-approved medications for cocaine use disorder, and contingency management — the only evidence-based behavioral treatment — is capped at $599/year by federal reimbursement rules. The people navigating this are doing it without the pharmacological floor opioid treatment at least tries to provide.
- Jun 20Arizona Watch
Arizona Is Going the Wrong Direction
Arizona overdose deaths rose 20% in January-August 2025 vs. the same period in 2024, while the nation reported a 13.2% decline. Fentanyl deaths up 40%. What the SOR IV grant and settlement funds can and can't fix.
- Jun 20Harm Reduction
Three Brands of OTC Naloxone Now Exist. Competition Alone Won't Save Lives.
FDA approved Rextovy, a third over-the-counter naloxone nasal spray, on June 16, 2026. The drug can now be bought without a prescription at any pharmacy — but the distribution problem in hard-hit communities remains unsolved.
- Jun 20Science & Medicine
The Molecule That Rewrites the Brain: Understanding Opioid Dependence
New PNAS 2026 research confirms opioid craving incubates — grows stronger — during abstinence. Understanding the biology of mu-opioid receptor adaptation makes the scientific case for buprenorphine and methadone.