Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Why Overdose Deaths Are Falling—and It Isn’t Because of the Drug War

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently reported that overdose deaths during the 12-month period ending in December 2025 declined by 13.9 percent compared to the previous year, reaching a total of 69,973, the overwhelming majority of which were due to fentanyl. While a drop in overdose deaths is welcome news, it is important to keep in mind that the total number of overdose deaths for the year ending in December 2019 was 70,630. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that the pre-pandemic trend line had grown exponentially since the late 1970s before the COVID pandemic disrupted that trend with spikes in overdose deaths, substance use, and suicide rates. The new numbers may signal a return to that trend.

Younger Americans Are Using Fewer Drugs

Another factor that may be contributing to the decline in overdose deaths is that younger Americans appear to be using many psychoactive substances less than previous generations. Federally funded surveys, such as the Monitoring the Future survey, have documented substantial long-term declines in adolescent cigarette smoking, alcohol use, and many illicit drugs, while CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey data show major reductions in teen alcohol use and cigarette smoking over the past two decades. Even youth vaping rates have fallen from their 2019 peak, according to the FDA/CDC National Youth Tobacco Survey. 

Researchers increasingly describe Gen Z as engaging in less risk-taking behavior overall than earlier cohorts, including less drinking, smoking, and drug use. While this trend alone probably does not fully explain the recent decline in overdose deaths, particularly since most fatal overdoses occur among adults in their 30s to 50s, it may reduce the number of younger people who progress into the highest-risk patterns of substance use associated with overdose mortality.

As pandemic-era supply chain and transportation disruptions eased, illicit drug markets also have become more diversified. During the pandemic, fentanyl largely displaced heroin in many regions of the country. More recently, some researchers and harm-reduction workers have reported signs that heroin availability has modestly rebounded in certain markets. Because heroin is less potent and generally longer-acting than fentanyl, some opioid users who developed tolerance to fentanyl may prefer heroin when it is available, potentially reducing exposure to the highly concentrated fentanyl products that drove record overdose deaths during the pandemic.

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A Single Dose Of Psilocybin Can Lead To ‘Rapid’ And ‘Long-Lasting’ Improvements In Depression, Study Indicates

A single dose of psilocybin, coupled with therapy sessions, significantly improved symptoms of depression within days and lasting for a period of months, according to a first-of-its-kind study out of Sweden that was published by the American Medical Association.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and the Brain Stimulation Clinic in Stockholm conducted the phase 2 randomized clinical trial, which involved 35 participants with moderate-t0-severe depression who received either a 25 milligram dose of psilocybin or a placebo of niacin.

For the study, published in JAMA Psychiatry last week, patients also underwent five psychotherapy sessions to supplement the psychedelic or placebo experience.

The psilocybin cohort, on average, showed clinically observable improvement in their symptoms compared to the placebo group at day 8.

“This finding implies that psilocybin can be an option to standard treatments when rapid symptom relief is important,” the paper says.

By the sixth week of the trial, 53 percent of the psilocybin cohort were considered to be in remission for depression, while just 6 percent of the placebo group said the same by that point.

However, researchers found that the overall effect seemed to subside after a year.

”Our results suggest that psilocybin can provide rapid, clinically meaningful improvement in depression and may serve as an alternative to standard treatment when fast symptom reduction is important,” lead study author Hampus Yngwe said in a press release.

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Your Brain Restricts Full Access to Reality. But Scientists Found a Way to Turn Off the Filter.

In 1956, British psychiatrist Humphry Osmond coined the word “psychedelic” from Greek roots meaning “mind-manifesting” or “soul-revealing.” The term proved fitting. Users report that seconds stretch into eternity, sounds turn into color, and you very self begins dissolving. And now, after decades in scientific exile, those same once-ostracized compounds are undergoing a dramatic scientific renaissance. Researchers are investigating them not only for depression, trauma, and addiction, but also as a potential window into one of neuroscience’s deepest mysteries: how the brain constructs reality itself. And a small, egg-shaped structure buried deep in the center of the brain, the thalamus, may play an important role in that process.

Scientists once viewed the thalamus largely as a relay station: a kind of biological switchboard routing sensory information to the cortex, the brain’s outer layer responsible for higher thought, perception, and conscious awareness. But newer theories suggest something far stranger. Increasingly, neuroscientists suspect reality may partly reflect the brain’s constantly updated “best guess” about the world—built from memory, expectation, sensory input, and context, as Michelle J. Redinbaugh, PhD, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, puts it.

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Federal Judge Dismisses Prohibitionist Lawsuit Challenging Medicare CBD Program

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit led by Smart Approaches to Marijuana challenging the Trump administration’s Medicare-linked CBD program, finding the plaintiffs failed to show they had standing to bring the case.

Judge Trevor N. McFadden, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, dismissed the case Friday, finding that SAM, MMJ International Holdings, its subsidiaries and the other plaintiffs failed to meet the basic requirement needed to sue in federal court.

SAM and its allies had asked the court to halt a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services program connected to hemp-derived CBD access for certain Medicare patients. The challenge had been placed on an expedited track after the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint and again asked for emergency court intervention.

“Each claims an injury too abstract or too remote to open the courtroom doors,” McFadden wrote.

Rather than weighing the broader legal claims raised in the lawsuit, McFadden said the case could not proceed because the plaintiffs did not establish Article III standing.

“At the outset, the Court notes that it need not tackle the bulk of questions that Plaintiffs raise in their motions,” McFadden wrote. “That is because Plaintiffs’ case suffers from a fatal flaw: the failure to establish Article III standing to bring their claims. The Court addresses only this jurisdictional hole and will dismiss the entire suit and deny Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction as moot.”

Because of that finding, the court did not rule on whether the plaintiffs were entitled to a preliminary injunction. McFadden instead concluded that the alleged harms outlined by the plaintiffs were not concrete enough to keep the lawsuit alive.

The case was brought by SAM, allied prohibitionist organizations, individual activists and MMJ International Holdings, a cannabis-focused biopharmaceutical company. The plaintiffs claimed the program raised legal and public health concerns, but McFadden found their alleged injuries were too distant from the policy to support federal jurisdiction.

The decision is a major loss for opponents of the Medicare-linked CBD policy, which has drawn attention as President Donald Trump’s administration moves to expand medical marijuana and cannabidiol (CBD) research and access.

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Complete Guide to Medical Marijuana Laws in All 41 Legal States

41 states have legalized the medical use of cannabis, representing over 80% of the entire United States. Below is a breakdown of all 41 states, including details on when the state legalized the medicine, when the first dispensary opened, possession limits and more.

Alabama

Year legalized: 2021.

Year first dispensary opened: The first dispensary is expected

Possession limits: up to 70 daily dosages for a registered patient; usable forms exclude raw flower, smoking, vaping, and standard edibles.

Tax rate: Alabama’s statute imposes a 9% excise tax on retail medical-cannabis sales, plus an annual medical-cannabis privilege tax.

Qualifying conditions: closed list, including cancer-related cachexia or nausea, depression or anxiety related to terminal illness, epilepsy, panic disorder, PTSD, autism spectrum disorder, MS/spinal-cord spasticity, terminal illness, Tourette syndrome, and chronic or intractable pain when conventional and opiate therapy is ineffective or contraindicated.

Anything else notable: the program has been unusually delayed by licensing litigation.

Alaska

Year legalized: 1998.

Year first dispensary opened: none; Alaska’s medical law did not create medical dispensaries, and later adult-use retail began separately in 2016.

Possession limits: generally 1 ounce usable cannabis and 6 plants, not more than 3 mature.

Tax rate: no medical-dispensary tax structure applies because there is no medical-dispensary system.

Qualifying conditions: classic closed debilitating-condition list, including cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, chronic pain, and seizure/spasticity-related conditions.

Anything else notable: Alaska remains one of the clearest examples of a patient/caregiver-plus-home-grow model rather than a dedicated medical-retail model.

Arizona

Year legalized: 2010.

Year first dispensary opened: 2012.

Possession limits: 2.5 ounces of usable marijuana; if the patient is cultivation-authorized because the residence is far from a dispensary, up to 12 plants.

Tax rate: no medical-specific excise was identified in the reviewed sources; Arizona’s adult-use excise does not apply to medical sales.

Qualifying conditions: closed list, including cancer, glaucoma, HIV, AIDS, hepatitis C, ALS, Crohn’s disease, agitation of Alzheimer’s disease, and severe pain, severe nausea, seizures, persistent muscle spasms, PTSD, and other department-added debilitating conditions.

Anything else notable: Arizona still preserves a meaningful medical advantage over adult-use through higher possession limits and cultivation access for some patients.

Arkansas

Year legalized: 2016.

Year first dispensary opened: 2019; the Arkansas Department of Health says the first dispensary opened on May 10, 2019.

Possession limits: 2.5 ounces every 14 days; no home cultivation.

Tax rate: Arkansas has ordinary sales tax on retail sales and a 4% special privilege tax on transfers of medical cannabis.

Qualifying conditions: closed list, including cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, ALS, Tourette’s syndrome, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, PTSD, severe arthritis, fibromyalgia, peripheral neuropathy, intractable pain, severe nausea, seizures, severe muscle spasms, Alzheimer’s disease, and cachexia.

Anything else notable: Arkansas allows visiting-patient cards, uses a strict registry-card model, and has one of the clearer official FAQ systems for conditions and limits.

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State police: 3 dead, 18 first responders hospitalized in Mountainair substance exposure

An emergency medical response to a suspected drug overdose at a home in Mountainair on Wednesday morning ended with the deaths of three people and hospital treatment of at least 18 first responders.

New Mexico State Police, which took over the investigation from local law enforcement, said emergency medical responders found four unresponsive people at the home on Honlon Avenue in Mountainair, a Torrance County mountain town of fewer than 1,000 people about 65 miles southeast of Albuquerque.

One person was revived with Narcan, a drug used to reverse opioid overdoses, Torrance County Sheriff David Frazee noted, and then first responders who entered the residence began feeling ill.

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Babies exposed to cannabis in the womb show no signs of impaired brain development, study finds

Children exposed to cannabis in the womb do not show signs of impaired cognitive or language development by age three, according to new research that challenges concerns about prenatal cannabis use.

The study, published in the journal Early Human Development, found that children with prenatal cannabis exposure actually scored higher on language assessments than unexposed children, and performed equally well on cognitive tests.

Recent data shows that past-month cannabis use amongst pregnant women in the US has grown from 3.8% in 2002 to 7% in 2017, and daily use during pregnancy increased from 0.9% to 3.5% in the same period.

This prompted the multi-national team of researchers from King’s College London, Cambridge University, Aalborg University, and the University of Oslo to hypothesise that children exposed to cannabis while developing in the womb would develop cognitive and language issues by the age of three.

The study analysed data from Danish families registered with Familieambulatorier (Family outreach clinics), which continuously monitor children of families deemed vulnerable or high-risk from early pregnancy until the child reaches school age.

The cohort consisted of 810 Danish children born between the years of 2009 and 2015 who were not diagnosed with conditions such as foetal alcohol syndrome or epilepsy, as these conditions would negatively affect the outcome of language and cognitive assessments.

Children were split into four groups, based on their exposure during gestation. 106 (13%) were exposed to cannabis only, 138 (17%) were exposed to tobacco only, 112 (14%) were exposed to both, and 454 (56%) were registered as not being exposed to either substance.

Researchers found that children with prenatal cannabis exposure achieved a higher Bayley-III Language scale score of 3.26-points than those in the group who were not exposed to cannabis, and they found that exposure to tobacco did not worsen this outcome.

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Plainfield adopts ban on sale of controversial drug kratom

The village of Plainfield has joined other communities in banning the sale of kratom, which the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has called “a drug of concern.”

Village trustees on Tuesday unanimously approved an ordinance that not only bans the sale or transfer of kratom, but also bans the sale or transfer of any novel synthetic or psychoactive drugs.

Those violating the ordinance could face a $250 fine. There is a statewide ban on the sale of kratom to anyone under the age of 18.

Kratom is an herbal extract from leaves of an evergreen tree called Mitragyna Speciosa, which grows in Southeast Asia. Kratom can be chewed, swallowed, brewed or added to a liquid.

In a memo to Plainfield Mayor John Argoudelis and village trustees, Plainfield Police Chief Robert Miller and Plainfield Village Administrator Joshua Blakemore recommended the board approve the ordinance.

“People who use kratom report that in low doses, kratom acts as a stimulant and in higher doses, it is reported it reduces pain and acts as a sedative,” they say in the memo. “Some people take kratom to ease the symptoms of quitting opioids, but it has its own risk of addiction. Kratom has not been shown to be safe or treat any medical conditions. The FDA has warned people not to use Kratom because of the possible harm it can cause.”

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