Tanesia DeMacon is no stranger to jail. She estimates she was arrested no fewer than 15 times, starting at the age of 18 and continuing throughout her 20s. “I used to joke that county jail was school ...

On September 12, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (LACDPH) announced that 7-Hydroxymitragynine had been linked to three overdose deaths. Better known as 7-OH, the synthetically ...

The need for harm reduction around alcohol use is both pressing and obvious. Yet too often—in a field dominated on the one hand by concerns over use of banned drugs, and on the other by the ubiquity ...

[This article is an adapted excerpt from On Opium: Pain, Pleasure, and Other Matters of Substance, which was published in Canada by Goose Lane Editions in September. An audiobook will be available ...

Calls to defund the police are picking up national momentum from Los Angeles to New York City. The Minneapolis City Council recently voted to abolish its police department. This may seem radical to ...

Alcoholics Anonymous and its 12 Steps, with their prescription of abstinence, have dominated America’s response to addiction for a half-century or more. Yet despite the urges of advocates and the ...

The year 2024 saw a hodgepodge of federal and congressional marijuana policy developments—with major news related to the Biden administration’s rescheduling push, modest reform proposals advancing on ...

The perception is widespread: If you have a history of drug use, your chances of a transplant for a failing organ are vanishingly slim. One thing we know is that active drug use usually disqualifies ...

Drugs, troublemaking, bad grades. At the close of 1968, Sidi was expelled from school. Now, the party could begin in earnest. He made music and lived in a filthy shared apartment, pretentiously ...

Vaping with flavors versus having to vape without them: The difference might sound trivial. But people whose lives have been transformed by tobacco harm reduction see it as existential. “The ...

The Trump administration will no longer allow grant funding from the Department of Health and Human Services to pay for drug-checking strips, a reversal that could substantially impact their ...

Tamera Lynn Stewart had been taking prescribed opioids for 12 years to treat her chronic pain, following some cancer-related surgeries. Then one day in April 2018, her doctor told her he could no ...