The Log
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876 stories, newest first.
July 2026
- Jul 7Harm Reduction
The FDA Just Let ZYN Say It's Safer Than Cigarettes. The Brain Circuit That Makes That Technically True Is Also Why Quitting Nicotine Pouches Is Its Own Fight.
The FDA authorized ZYN nicotine pouches to claim lower cancer/heart-disease risk than cigarettes. The nicotinic receptor circuitry behind that claim is the same circuitry that makes nicotine dependence so hard to shake.
- Jul 7Science & Medicine
463,396 Teenagers, Tracked for Years, Found the Same Thing: Cannabis Use Roughly Doubles Later Psychosis Risk. The DEA Is Deciding Its Schedule This Month Anyway.
A 463,396-person adolescent cohort study finds past-year cannabis use associated with roughly double the risk of later psychotic and bipolar disorder — published as the DEA hears testimony on rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III.
- Jul 7The Crisis, By the Numbers
Naloxone Doesn't Touch It: A Veterinary Sedative Is Quietly Taking Over Where Xylazine Left Off
CDC data shows medetomidine detections in the illicit opioid supply rose from 247 in 2023 to over 8,200 in 2025. It isn't reversed by naloxone and produces a distinct, dangerous withdrawal syndrome.
- Jul 7Lived Experience & Community
New Study Confirms What Every Peer Worker Already Knew: They Just Get It, and the Job Is Wrecking Them Anyway
A new International Journal of Drug Policy study of 36 peer workers in addiction and mental health services finds trust that clinicians can't replicate — and burnout that most employers still don't design against.
- Jul 7Arizona Watch
Arizona's Overdose Deaths Are Climbing While the Rest of the Country's Are Falling. The Crackdown That Was Supposed to Help Is Part of Why.
Arizona overdose deaths rose 18% in 2025 while the national rate fell 14%. The state's crackdown on $2.8B in sober-living Medicaid fraud cut billing 92% — and may have taken real treatment capacity down with the fake.
- Jul 6Science & Medicine
Craving Isn't a Moral Failure — New Research Says It's a Measurable Warning Sign
A UCLA-led meta-analysis in Addiction finds a medication's effect on cue-induced craving modestly predicts real-world relapse to heavy drinking — but the link is borderline and narrow.
- Jul 6Policy & Funding
The DEA Reconvenes a Hearing on a Decision Already Made
The DEA's rescheduling hearing resumes today after the July 4th recess, but Acting AG Todd Blanche already moved cannabis to Schedule III in April. What that ordering means, and why Arizona's tax revenue collapse matters more than the hearing's outcome.
- Jul 6The Crisis, By the Numbers
Naloxone Can't Touch Medetomidine — and Federal Guidance Just Defunded the Strips That Would Warn You
Medetomidine detections in the drug supply rose 215% in 2025 and don't respond to naloxone. SAMHSA guidance now blocks grant funding for the test strips that could catch it.
- Jul 6Lived Experience & Community
Three People Got Better Without Ever Saying 'Never Again'
Rachel, Joe, and Theresa tell Filter Magazine how HAMS moderation, tapering, and naltrexone got them better without total abstinence — a direct look at harm reduction as real recovery.
- Jul 6Treatment & Recovery
Arizona Firefighters Are Eating Psilocybin Chocolates for PTSD. The FDA Just Decided to Take It Seriously.
Inside Arizona's state-funded psilocybin trial for first responders with PTSD, Compass Pathways' Phase 3 depression data, and the FDA's new fast-track for psychedelic drugs — and what the fifty-year research freeze that preceded all of it actually cost.
- Jul 6Policy & Funding
CMS Rewrote Who Counts as Medically Frail. Getting Better Now Counts Against You.
A new CMS rule excludes people in 'active recovery for 5 or more years' from Medicaid's substance-use-disorder exemption to work requirements. Arizona is one of 25 states suing to stop it before it takes effect July 31.
- Jul 5Science & Medicine
The Government Sat on This Alcohol Study. The Data Says Why.
A federally commissioned alcohol-health study the administration declined to release has been independently published, finding no safe threshold for consumption — alongside new data linking heavy drinking to obesity.
- Jul 5Policy & Funding
The DEA Is About to Schedule 'Gas Station Heroin.' Kratom Itself Gets to Stay Legal.
DEA's notice of intent to schedule 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH) targets concentrated extracts sold as gas-station opioids, not the traditional kratom leaf — a distinction Arizona's own 'gas station heroin' crisis makes urgent.
- Jul 5Lived Experience & Community
Your Craving Isn't a Character Flaw. Yale Just Built a Model of It.
New computational psychiatry research shows craving actively reshapes decision-making rather than just reflecting it — and explains why relapse risk can worsen months into abstinence.
- Jul 5Policy & Funding
The DEA Built a Cannabis Rescheduling Hearing Where Only One Side Gets to Talk
DEA's cannabis rescheduling hearing, running through July 15, seated only rescheduling opponents as witnesses — and the DOJ is now defending the process in court.
- Jul 5Science & Medicine
Ketamine Got Rebranded as a Miracle Depression Drug. The Bladder Surgeries Never Left.
Ketamine clinics grew from under 100 to 1,500+ in a decade. Recreational use is rising alongside them, and the DEA's response — emergency-scheduling a little-used analog — is drawing fire from its own harm reduction allies.
- Jul 5Arizona Watch
The Sheriff Took Out the Scanners. Five Days Later, Anahi Rubio Was Dead.
Maricopa County jail deaths rose 75% after Sheriff Jerry Sheridan removed employee security scanners — inside the same year Arizona's overdose crisis defied the national decline.
- Jul 4Lived Experience & Community
Ten People Broke the Only Rule Anyone Ever Gave Them About Drinking. Most of Them Are Fine.
Ten real people describe moderating, tapering, and using naltrexone instead of pursuing abstinence-only sobriety — and thirty years of NIAAA and FDA research now backs a path the field spent decades dismissing.
- Jul 4Policy & Funding
The Government Is Fighting a Drug-Testing Company in Court Over Whether Weed Is Still a Schedule I Drug
The DEA's cannabis rescheduling hearing must conclude by July 15, 2026. The DOJ is fighting to keep it on track against a drug-testing industry group — while new science complicates both sides of the story.
- Jul 4Science & Medicine
There Has Never Been an FDA-Approved Medication for Cocaine Addiction. A Small Alabama Trial Just Showed Why That Might Be About to Change.
A randomized trial from the University of Alabama at Birmingham found psilocybin plus therapy outperformed placebo for cocaine use disorder — a condition with zero FDA-approved medications — in a majority-Black study population.
- Jul 4Policy & Funding
The FDA Just Let ZYN Say It's the Safer Choice. Teenagers Already Decided That.
The FDA authorized the first-ever modified-risk order for nicotine pouches, letting ZYN market itself as lower-risk than cigarettes — while its own youth survey found ZYN is the most-used pouch brand among teens.
- Jul 4Arizona Watch
Arizona Just Seized 4 Million Fentanyl Pills. July Is Still Going to Be Its Deadliest Month.
CBP's largest-ever fentanyl seizure happened at Arizona's Lukeville port of entry on July 1. Maricopa County data shows July overdose deaths run more than double January's — a supply bust doesn't touch that pattern.
- Jul 4Policy & Funding
The DEA Just Drew a Line Through Kratom. The Gas-Station Side Lost.
The DEA moved to schedule 7-OH, a concentrated kratom derivative sold as gas-station gummies, as a Schedule I narcotic — while leaving raw kratom leaf legal. Filter Mag says the fix doesn't fix anything.
- Jul 3Treatment & Recovery
The First Benzodiazepine Prescription Doesn't Look Like a Drug Problem. That's Exactly How It Becomes One.
A July 2026 study links initial benzodiazepine prescription length to years of use. The 1970s Valium era already proved how normalized dependence hides in plain sight — here's the biology, the history, and what to do if you're the one holding the bottle.