The Log
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733 stories, newest first.
August 2026
- Aug 14Policy & Funding
Massachusetts Bans All Kratom, Going Further Than the Feds Just Did
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey placed all kratom products into Schedule I, a broader ban than the federal government's own July move targeting only concentrated 7-OH extracts.
- Aug 14Lived Experience & Community
A Premium Hike Is a Relapse Trigger, Not a Billing Problem
A Yale physician's patient has been stable on buprenorphine for years — until her marketplace premium jumped from $40 to $138 a month. He argues insurance disruption is itself a clinical event, and new brain research on craving explains why.
- Aug 14Policy & Funding
CMS Wrote a Medicaid Rule That Punishes People for Staying in Recovery
CMS's new interim final rule on Medicaid work requirements invents a 'significantly impair' standard absent from the underlying statute and excludes people with five-plus years of stable substance use recovery from the medically frail exemption — critics say it punishes exactly the outcome recovery is supposed to produce.
- Aug 13Arizona Watch
Maricopa County Has Collected $97 Million in Opioid Settlement Cash. Jails Are Where It's Actually Changing Intake.
Maricopa County has received $96.7 million of a $333 million anticipated opioid settlement. Some of it now funds staff who start medication for opioid use disorder inside county jails before release — while Arizona overdose deaths rose double digits this year.
- Aug 13Technology & Innovation
A Wearable Patch Just Beat Usual Care at Breaking the Craving-to-Use Pipeline
A JAMA Psychiatry randomized trial found a heart-rate variability biofeedback patch reduced craving, negative affect, and substance use in early recovery — and appeared to weaken the link between craving and relapse itself.
- Aug 13Lived Experience & Community
Relapse Isn't the Opposite of Recovery. Shame Is.
A treatment-center clinician explains the 'pink cloud' phenomenon and the shame-isolation cycle that turns one bad night into a longer relapse — and why the data says a slip is not the end of the story.
- Aug 13Policy & Funding
The Federal Hemp Ban Isn't About Weed. It's About Who Gets to Decide What Counts as Medicine.
A federal redefinition of hemp will make roughly 95% of hemp-derived THC products federally illegal on December 11. A Texas smoke shop owner and the general counsel of the U.S. Hemp Roundtable explain what's actually at stake.
- Aug 13The Crisis, By the Numbers
The Overdose Numbers Are Finally Falling. Washington Just Defunded the Reason Why.
CDC data shows overdose deaths down 13% and fentanyl potency down 50%. The same spring SAMHSA cut the harm-reduction grants credited with the drop — starting with a Kentucky coalition that lost $400,000 and a month of test strips.
- Aug 12Arizona Watch
Arizona Built an AI Tool to Answer the Question a Crisis Doesn't Leave Time to Google Properly
AHCCCS's Gemini-powered SMS and web treatment locator has reached 20,000+ unique individuals across 120+ Arizona cities since launch, with a 55%+ engaged session rate.
- Aug 12Science & Medicine
A Fentanyl Vaccine Is in Human Trials. It Is Not Ready to Save Anyone Yet.
A novel-scaffold anti-fentanyl vaccine blocked opioid effects in mice against an entire class of designer analogs. Human Phase I trials, safety-only, began in January 2026.
- Aug 12Science & Medicine
Your Brain Doesn't Just Feel a Craving. A Craving Changes How Your Brain Decides.
A Yale-led computational modeling study shows moment-to-moment craving reshapes how the brain learns from rewards and makes decisions in people who drink or use cannabis heavily.
- Aug 12Science & Medicine
The Starting Dose Your Doctor Writes for Anxiety Is Already in the Danger Zone
A Finnish national cohort of 48,124 new benzodiazepine users found overdose risk more than triples at medium-high doses — including doses inside the standard starting range for common anxiety prescriptions.
- Aug 12Lived Experience & Community
The Only Credential That Can't Be Taught in School Is Finally Being Treated Like One
A 36-worker Australian study confirms lived experience is professional expertise, not a risk to manage. Arizona already requires it by law for recovery coaches — so why does the workforce still get treated like a liability?
- Aug 11Lived Experience & Community
The Hardest Part of Getting Sober Isn't Staying Sober. It's Figuring Out Who You Are Without It.
Willpower gets all the credit and none of the follow-through. What actually holds once the willpower runs out is whether you've built a self that doesn't need the thing you're recovering from.
- Aug 11Policy & Funding
The FDA Just Approved Four More Nicotine Pouches. A Courtroom Is About to Ask If That Was a Mistake.
Thirty pouch products are now FDA-authorized. A December trial over ZYN's marketing is the first real test of whether authorization and safety are the same thing.
- Aug 11Policy & Funding
The Senate Just Bought Hemp THC Products One More Month. Nobody Thinks a Month Fixes This.
An 89-4 vote pushed the federal hemp ban from November to December. The lopsided margin says more about how unresolved this fight is than any actual resolution does.
- Aug 11Harm Reduction
You Don't Have to Want to Quit Drinking for This Drug to Help You Drink Less
For ninety years, American addiction treatment had one accepted destination: zero. A weekly injection and two very different city programs are testing what happens when 'less' is allowed to count as a win.
- Aug 11Science & Medicine
A New 340,000-Person Drinking Study Will Get Misquoted by Friday. Here's What It Actually Found.
Heavy drinking raises your risk of dying no matter what's in the glass. Below that, the picture splits by beverage in a way the wine industry will love and the data doesn't fully support.
- Aug 11Harm Reduction
SAMHSA Defunded the Test Strips That Were Working. Baltimore Is About to Find Out What That Costs.
A fentanyl test strip is federally fundable in a police officer's pocket and federally forbidden in a harm-reduction worker's hand. That isn't an accident. It's April 2026 policy, and Baltimore's Penn North neighborhood is the test case.
- Aug 10Science & Medicine
The FDA Just Cut Psilocybin's Review to Two Months — and the Drug Was Never the Slow Part
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary handed Compass Pathways a National Priority Voucher, shrinking psilocybin's review to weeks. The science looks real. The therapist-training and access infrastructure to actually deliver it does not exist yet.
- Aug 10The Crisis, By the Numbers
The FDA Approved Four More Nicotine Pouches This Week. Teen Use Already Nearly Quadrupled Without Them.
Nicotine pouch use among youth nearly quadrupled between 2022 and 2025. The same week that data circulated, the FDA authorized four more pouch products for market.
- Aug 10Arizona Watch
Arizona's Heat Deaths Aren't a Weather Story. They're a Meth Story With the AC Turned Off.
Arizona's overdose death rate has overtaken West Virginia's as national deaths fall. Methamphetamine — which disables the body's ability to sense its own overheating — drives most of the state's heat deaths, right as federal addiction funding gets pulled.
- Aug 10Treatment & Recovery
Meth and Cocaine Still Have No Approved Medication — and the One Treatment That Works Is Starving for Funding
There's no FDA-approved medication for methamphetamine or cocaine use disorder. Contingency management is the only treatment with strong evidence behind it — and it's chronically underfunded, politically fragile, and stigmatized as 'paying people not to use drugs.'
- Aug 10Science & Medicine
Scheduling Xylazine Didn't Make It Disappear. It Made Room for Something Worse.
A new International Journal of Drug Policy study finds that states scheduling xylazine saw medetomidine detections spike with no drop in xylazine — the same substitution pattern CDC surveillance is now tracking in real time, just as SAMHSA cuts funding for the test strips that catch it.