Jane* didn’t think much about the Sam’s Club salad she’d eaten days before she was to give birth in March 2021. But the salad—covered in poppy-seed dressing—would land her on the New York State Central Register of Child Abuse and Maltreatment. This subjected the new family to multiple, stressful visits from Child Protective Services, which removes thousands of children from their homes. There were 14,657 children in New York State foster care in June 2021 (the most recent available data). Most were under the age of 6. One senior director of foster care told News 10 that year that the state was ..read more

For people who use drugs, accessing prescription pain medication when needed can be a severe challenge. A new paper digs into this issue by investigating factors that may cause a doctor to prescribe or not prescribe to people who use drugs (PWUD)—and what people do if they’re turned away. “I think the way the health care system is developed is not necessarily with a harm reduction approach,” Evelyne Piret, one of the paper’s authors, told Filter. The paper was published on March 28 in the Harm Reduction Journal. It studies outcomes for 1,168 Vancouver-based participants who had asked to be pre ..read more

In 2016, the Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) opened Trousdale Turner Correctional Center—the largest of the state’s 14 prisons, and the site of constant violence from almost its very first day. Around that same time, Tennessee’s South Central Correctional Facility decided to try taking the 128 prisoners whose disciplinary records showed the least history of violence, and moving us all into the same living unit. Over the past several years, while no one was really watching, the residents of Gemini Unit have built community in a way that’s rarely in found in prison. In three decades o ..read more

Researchers are asking a federal court to block the Drug Enforcement Administration from proceeding in its attempt to ban two psychedelics, arguing that the agency’s administrative approach to the proposed scheduling is unconstitutional. Panacea Plant Sciences (PPS), a psychedelic research company, filed a complaint and request for injunctive relief against the DEA in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington on April 10. The legal challenge focuses on the agency’s recent scheduling of an administrative hearing to receive expert input on its controversial plans to ..read more

San Francisco recorded slowly decreasing overdose deaths over the first three months of 2024, according to new data. But how much optimism can we take from this? March was the second consecutive month in 2024 that fatal overdoses decreased, based on data from the city medical examiner, as Axios San Francisco reported. Citywide, 72 people lost their lives in January. This decreased to 66 deaths in February, then 61 in March. In March, the city reports that 45 deaths involved fentanyl. Anna Berg, LCSW, programs director at the Harm Reduction Therapy Center in San Francisco, described the news as ..read more

People in the United States have become increasingly likely to find that nicotine vapes help them quit cigarettes, according to new research. The study, published in the Nicotine & Tobacco Research journal, evaluated US population-level trends in adult cigarette quitting rates between 2013-2021. In the earlier period, between 2013 and 2016, the researchers found no essential difference between those who used vapes and those who didn’t: The quit rate in both groups was 16 percent. But in more recent years, from 2018-2021, people using vapes had a quit rate of almost 31 percent—much higher t ..read more

At a psychedelics conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, this July, attendees are due to hear talks on topics including “Psychedelics, War and Conflict.” Guests at Psychedelic Medicine Israel are invited to “join us in expanding consciousness in the Middle East.” Originally slated for December 2023, the conference was delayed after the Hamas-led attacks of October 7 killed over 1,100 people in southern Israel. Since then, Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians, in what observers widely describe as genocide—a charge denied by Israel, but considered “plausible” by th ..read more

A lawsuit accuses a New York county jail of repeatedly denying a man held there his medication for opioid use disorder (OUD), forcing him into painful withdrawal. The facility allegedly broke laws that require corrections officers to allow detainees such medication. The case concerns 26-year-old Koree Wilson. Diagnosed with OUD in 2019, he was treated by his hospital with daily doses of methadone. Then, in 2020, he was incarcerated for 14 days at the Fulton County Correctional Facility (FCCF) in Johnstown, in Upstate New York. During this period, he was allegedly denied his medication for days ..read more

The United States has invested trillions of dollars to equip our armed forces with hardware and technology. Yet over the past few years, our government has overlooked technological innovations that could ultimately save the lives of millions of US service members and veterans, while saving the US health system billions of dollars. Active-duty military and veterans are more likely to smoke cigarettes than the average American. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, high stress and the need to stay alert contribute to higher rates of tobacco use. In 2018, 18.4 percent of se ..read more

Tens of thousands of workers are leaving the commercial trucking industry because the federal government refuses to update its antiquated marijuana policies. Fewer truckers on the road results in supply chain shortages and higher prices for the goods Americans rely on. At issue are federal regulations adopted in 1988, mandating all federally contracted workers to refrain from the use of certain controlled substances, including cannabis. Despite the reality that most state governments have since legalized cannabis use under certain circumstances, neither Congress nor federal regulators have rev ..read more