Section

Harm Reduction

Naloxone, fentanyl test strips, xylazine, syringe services, safe supply.

Fentanyl Didn't Spare Cocaine — and the Overdose Data Show Exactly Who It's Hitting

A Pennsylvania county's emergency warning this week lines up with CDC numbers showing Black Americans bearing the sharpest rise in cocaine-fentanyl deaths — this isn't one county's bad luck.

Sep 152 minRead

More in Harm Reduction

96 total in this section

02Harm ReductionSep 14

Xylazine Scheduling Didn't Shrink the Tranq Crisis. It Created a Worse One.

A new study links state xylazine scheduling to a surge in medetomidine, a more potent, harder-to-detect veterinary sedative now dominating drug supplies from Philadelphia to the Northeast.

03Harm ReductionSep 14

The FDA Wants to Talk About Psilocybin's Future. It Won't Touch Who's Using It Right Now.

The FDA holds a public hearing today on psilocybin's therapeutic future while explicitly excluding legal status from the agenda — even as poison control calls and unsupervised use keep climbing.

04Harm ReductionSep 12

Washington Defunded Harm Reduction. The Newsroom Covering It Couldn't Outlast the Cut.

Filter Magazine, the nonprofit outlet that covered drug use as lived expertise, is shutting down four months after SAMHSA barred federal funds from syringes, pipes, and fentanyl test strips. The money and the storytelling are being cut together.

05Harm Reduction

Earlier in Harm Reduction

Every piece in this section, most recent first.

Harm Reduction

Fentanyl Didn't Spare Cocaine — and the Overdose Data Show Exactly Who It's Hitting

More in Harm Reduction

Xylazine Scheduling Didn't Shrink the Tranq Crisis. It Created a Worse One.

The FDA Wants to Talk About Psilocybin's Future. It Won't Touch Who's Using It Right Now.

Washington Defunded Harm Reduction. The Newsroom Covering It Couldn't Outlast the Cut.

Luzerne County Just Said Out Loud What the National Data Has Shown for Years: Cocaine Is an Opioid Problem Now

The Hospital Treats the Emergency. Then You're Discharged Alone With the Disease That Caused It.

Washington Decided Test Strips Send the Wrong Message. Kentucky Has a Month Left.

Earlier in Harm Reduction

Whippets Are Still Legal Everywhere, and the Death Toll Just Went Up 578%

Xylazine Is Losing Ground in the Drug Supply. What's Replacing It Is Worse, and Naloxone Still Won't Touch Either One.

The Bar Stamped 'Xanax' Might Be a Drug the DEA Only Banned Six Months Ago

SAMHSA Killed Test-Strip Funding on the One Day We're Supposed to Count the Dead

The Best Treatment for Stimulant Addiction Pays You to Stay Clean. For Forty Years, We Refused to Try It.

SAMHSA Had to Write a Letter Confirming Naloxone Isn't 'Harm Reduction' — to Keep It Funded

Bend Police Are Now Giving Six Doses of Narcan to Revive One Person. The Supply Changed Under Them.

Nobody Told Claudia Dimit's Son That a Can of Computer Duster Could Kill Him. The Label Still Doesn't.

The FDA Just Let Nicotine Pouches Say 'Lower Risk.' Your Brain Will Hear 'Safe.'

Ketamine's Boom Just Met Its Bill, and Nitrous Oxide Is Getting the Bill Too

The FDA Just Approved More Nicotine Pouches — Teenagers Are the Ones Getting Trapped

The Movement Lost Its Newsroom the Same Week Washington Declared It Finished

New Jersey Already Tried Recalling 'Gas Station Heroin' Once. Now the DEA Is Running the Same Play on Kratom.

The Trump Administration Just Defunded the Warning Label on Street Drugs

A Federal Grant Built This Recovery Network. A Federal Letter Might Kill It.

Washington Wants You to Prove You Deserve a Bed. Jean Descamps Ran Out of Time.

You Don't Have to Want to Quit Drinking for This Drug to Help You Drink Less

SAMHSA Defunded the Test Strips That Were Working. Baltimore Is About to Find Out What That Costs.

Nobody Regulates the Gas Station Whippet Aisle Until Someone Dies. Then It Takes a Lawsuit.

Naloxone Still Saves Lives. It Can't Touch the Drug That's Replacing Xylazine.

Missy Jellison Beat Meth Working the Program Minnesota Just Defunded

The DEA Can Ban 7-OH Starting Tomorrow. It Tried This Once Before, and Lost.

Cannabis Isn't One Story Anymore. It's a Psychosis Risk, a Drinking Substitute, and a Treatment Gap — All at Once.

SAMHSA Just Made It Cheaper to Die Than to Know What You're Dying From

Naloxone Still Reverses Fentanyl. It Doesn't Touch What's Being Cut Into It Now.

Xylazine Was the Adulterant Everyone Learned to Test For. Medetomidine Is 300 Times Stronger, and the Government Just Defunded the Strips That Catch It

Substance Spotlight: Inhalants Are the Overdose Crisis Nobody Is Watching, and It's Getting Younger

The Drug That's Replacing Xylazine Is Already Winning, and Your Test Strip Can't See It

A Thousand People Watched Someone Overdose. Peers With Naloxone Saved 83 Percent of Them.

The Ketamine Clinic Boom Is About to Meet the Same Federal Prosecutor Who Ended Florida's Pill Mills

Cannabis Got Roughly Ten Times Stronger Since the 1990s. Nobody Rewrote the Warning Label to Match.

Oklahoma's Syringe Law Died on Schedule. Washington Made Sure Nothing Would Replace It.

Naloxone Doesn't Touch It, and It's Already in Minnesota

SAMHSA Just Told Grantees Their Federal Money Can't Buy Test Strips Anymore. A New Study Put a Body Count on What That Means.

DEA Draws a Real Line Between Kratom Leaf and the Gas-Station Opioid Products Wearing Its Name

Charleston County Had 39 Overdoses This Month. Bystanders Carried the Antidote to Fewer Than Half.

Naloxone Doesn't Touch This One. Here's What's Actually in the Supply Now.

There's No Narcan for What Killed Michael Robins

The DEA Just Scheduled the Thing People Used to Get Off Opioids. It Built Them Nothing to Replace It.

FDA's New Psychedelic Trial Rules Don't Reach the Clinics Where Ibogaine Patients Are Dying

A Vending Machine in Maricopa County Is Already Reversing Overdoses This Summer

Meg Caldwell Bought It Legally Every Time. It Killed Her Anyway.

A Third OTC Naloxone Brand Won't Save Anyone Whose Kit Is in a Drawer at Home

Naloxone Doesn't Touch Tranq. Scientists Just Figured Out Why — and What Actually Does.

Oklahoma Had a Law That Was Working. Lawmakers Let It Die Anyway.

A GHB Overdose Cluster Killed One Person in Wellington Over a Single Weekend. The Trend Line Behind It Has Been Climbing for a Decade.

A Gift Card Cut Overdose Deaths by 41%. The VA Data Just Proved It Wasn't a Fluke.

She Died From a Can of Computer Cleaner. Arizona's Fix Is a Felony Charge — for the Next Buyer, Not the Can.

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.

DEA Just Scheduled an Opioid Ten Times Stronger Than Fentanyl. Your Test Strip Won't Catch It.

The DEA Learned From 2016 — This Time It's Only Banning Half the Plant

Jails Are Killing People With a Drug Withdrawal They Refuse to Treat as Medicine

SAMHSA Made It Cheaper to Die Than to Know What You're Dying From