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August 2026
- Aug 19Lived Experience & Community
Overdose Deaths Are Falling. The Craving Didn't Get the Memo.
CDC data shows overdose deaths falling 12% nationally, but a Wyoming woman's fentanyl overdose this month shows why the psychology of craving and withdrawal doesn't move with the statistics.
- Aug 19The Crisis, By the Numbers
The Overdose Numbers Are Dropping. Believe the Drug Supply Got More Dangerous Anyway
CDC data shows overdose deaths down 12% and falling for a third year. But medetomidine — a veterinary sedative naloxone can't touch — is overtaking xylazine in the fentanyl supply, and SAMHSA just banned federal funding for the test strips that catch it.
- Aug 18The Crisis, By the Numbers
Every Time a State Schedules One Sedative, the Drug Supply Finds Another. Medetomidine Is What's Next.
Medetomidine is displacing xylazine in the illicit fentanyl supply as fast as states schedule xylazine. Plus: where DEA's 7-OH kratom and tianeptine scheduling actions actually stand.
- Aug 18Science & Medicine
Semaglutide Just Outperformed Every FDA-Approved Alcohol Medication. It's Still Not Approved For That.
A University of Colorado trial and a Lancet study both found semaglutide reduces heavy drinking more than existing alcohol use disorder medications — without being approved to treat it.
- Aug 18Lived Experience & Community
Fentanyl Gets a Test Strip. Meth Gets Called 'Excited Delirium' and a Cell.
Kastalia Medrano's essay on her own meth use argues harm reduction was built for opioids and left stimulant users behind. Federal sentencing data backs her up.
- Aug 18Harm Reduction
A Federal Grant Built This Recovery Network. A Federal Letter Might Kill It.
SAMHSA banned federal grant dollars from buying fentanyl test strips and funding overdose hotlines this spring. A new modeling study says cuts like it could cost thousands of lives. Now CMS is coming for Medicaid coverage too — and Arizona is exposed on every front.
- Aug 17Arizona Watch
Arizona Is Winning the Opioid Fight It Built and Losing the Meth-and-Heat Crisis It Didn't
Arizona's opioid overdoses are plunging in its biggest counties, but statewide deaths hit a record high — because methamphetamine, not fentanyl alone, is now driving the crisis, and Arizona's summer heat is making it deadlier.
- Aug 17Science & Medicine
A Brain Scan Just Showed What Mindfulness Actually Does to a Craving
A UC San Diego-affiliated fMRI trial found Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement reduced drug-cue reactivity in brain regions tied to self-control and rumination — real evidence, with real limits.
- Aug 17Science & Medicine
The VA Just Bet on Ozempic for Alcoholism — Because No One Ever Built Alcoholism a Drug of Its Own
The VA opens a GLP-1 trial for alcohol use disorder today, joining Lancet, NIAAA, and UW research all converging on Ozempic's drug class as addiction medicine's best new lead.
- Aug 17Treatment & Recovery
One-Third of Methadone Clinics Still Choose Punishment Over Treatment
A STAT News survey of 241 clinics shows most opioid treatment programs dropped medication-as-punishment after SAMHSA's 2024 overhaul — and Pew data shows take-home doses haven't increased diversion. So what are the holdouts still protecting?
- Aug 17Policy & Funding
The DEA Rescheduling Hearing Excluded the People It Was About — Don't Call the Outcome Legitimate Yet
Post-hearing briefs are due today in the DEA's marijuana rescheduling proceeding — a closed-door, non-livestreamed hearing that excluded reform advocates and now hands the real decision to a single political appointee.
- Aug 17The Crisis, By the Numbers
A Flavored Canister Is Killing More People Every Year, and the Law Is Only Now Catching Up
Nitrous oxide deaths are up 578% in 14 years. Arizona teen Renna O'Rourke's death and HB 2191 show why regulation, and harm reduction, are both behind.
- Aug 17Harm Reduction
Washington Wants You to Prove You Deserve a Bed. Jean Descamps Ran Out of Time.
HHS's new 'Treatment First' toolkit asks people to prove they're ready before they get help — the same bet that killed Jean Descamps in a hospital parking lot.
- Aug 16Policy & Funding
Weed Is More Popular Than the Politicians Running From It
Cannabis ballot fights in Massachusetts and Idaho, plus governor's races in Kansas and Iowa, show voters running ahead of their own parties on legalization.
- Aug 16Lived Experience & Community
Filter Shut Down This Week. Believe People Who Use Drugs Anyway.
Filter magazine, the harm-reduction newsroom run by people who use drugs, closed this week. New Yale research on craving explains why losing that voice is a psychological blow, not just a media one.
- Aug 16Policy & Funding
FDA Approved a True Claim About Zyn — Then Let the Industry Aim It at Kids Who Never Smoked
FDA authorized Zyn to claim it's 'lower risk' than cigarettes — a true statement for smokers that's landing in a market where teen pouch use has nearly quadrupled since 2022.
- Aug 16Policy & Funding
HHS Built Its Case Against Housing First on a Study Whose Authors Say the Opposite
HHS, HUD, and ONDCP unveiled a 'Treatment First' toolkit that conditions housing on sobriety. It cites a veteran mortality study to justify the move — but the study's authors call for treatment inside housing, not housing withheld until treatment is done.
- Aug 15Policy & Funding
Washington Fast-Tracked Psilocybin This Year — Your Local VA Still Can't Prescribe It
FDA priority vouchers, a Nature Medicine depression trial, and new brain-imaging data all landed for psilocybin in 2026 — but the drug is still Schedule I and nobody can prescribe it yet. Here's the real timeline.
- Aug 15Lived Experience & Community
Wanting Outlives Liking, and That's Why Relapse Isn't a Moral Failure
New research on the brain's craving circuitry — orexin and a region called the lateral septum — explains why wanting a drug and liking it are two different systems, and why that gap is where relapse actually happens.
- Aug 15Policy & Funding
Colombia's New President Is Importing a Drug War That Already Killed 221 People and Didn't Work
Colombia's new president asked Trump to bring the deadly boat-strike campaign onshore. Cocaine production has hit a record high anyway — a case study in what a billion dollars doesn't fix.
- Aug 15Policy & Funding
The White House's New Homelessness Rules Make Sobriety the Price of a Roof. Its Own Data Says That Gets People Killed.
A new federal toolkit tells cities to require sobriety before housing and defund harm reduction. The veterans study the administration cites for cover argues the opposite — and SAMHSA has already lost half its staff to pay for it.
- Aug 14Science & Medicine
Ketamine Is Becoming Medicine and Contraband at the Same Time
Ketamine is being rehabilitated as first-line psychiatric medicine and cracked down on as a diverted street drug at the same time — here's what the 2026 data on Spravato, chronic pain, DEA scheduling, and the UK youth crisis actually shows.
- Aug 14Science & Medicine
The Math on Cutting Syringe Funding: Up to 39,600 Extra Deaths
A JAMA Network Open microsimulation projects up to 39,600 additional deaths over five years if federal funding for syringe service programs is cut 80%. Here's what the model can and can't tell us.
- Aug 14Science & Medicine
FDA Fast-Tracks an Ozempic-Class Drug for Alcohol Use Disorder
The FDA granted Fast Track designation to pemvidutide, a dual GLP-1/glucagon drug, for alcohol use disorder — a regulatory speed-up, not a verdict on results, entering a field where only 2.6% of people with AUD get any medication.