About a decade ago, people serving life with parole in Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) prisons began to realize we were just serving life. Each year a few dozen parole-eligible lifers are granted mercy, and a few thousand are left to rot with no reason ever given to them. A bill currently being read in the Georgia Senate would ask something unprecedented of the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles: transparency. SB 586 appears to apply to anyone with a parole-eligible sentence who has earned the maximum possible performance incentive credits, or to lifers (who are not permitted ..read more

The United Kingdom’s tobacco ban is one step closer to becoming law. On April 16 the Tobacco and Vapes Bill passed through the House of Commons, with ministers casting 383 votes in favor and 67 against. Despite the bill’s overwhelming majority approval, 57 of the opposing votes came from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s own Conservative party, undermining his authority amid disputes over the controversial bill. The legislation will authorize on-the-spot fines on anyone selling tobacco products to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009. It will then increase the legal age of purchase by one year ..read more

After an unsuccessful attempt to pass drug-induced homicide legislation in 2023, Utah is finding other ways to criminalize people for drug distribution. According to the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah (USAO-UT), a newly formed Utah Drug Overdose Task Force, focused on fentanyl, will “raise awareness and increase the number of prosecutable cases.” The task force a collaboration between USAO-UT and the Drug Enforcement Administration. USAO-UT announced the news in a press release April 5, one day after it announced sentencing in a high-profile drug distribution case tha ..read more

Tobacco has long played a significant role in the culture of Rwanda—gifted and shared, and traditionally used at weddings, though this has now reportedly declined.  Rwanda’s smoking rate has fallen, from an estimated 15 percent of the adult population in 2000 to 10 percent in 2015. Changing societal attitudes and growing awareness of the risks of smoking are behind this.  The decline seems to be slowing, however, with only a slight further fall—to 9 percent—projected by 2025. The small, central African country still suffers over 2,000 smoking-related deaths each year. Widespread adop ..read more

Lawmakers in Vermont have formally adopted changes to narrow the scope of a House-passed safe consumption site (SCS) bill, which in its amended form would create and fund a facility in Burlington where people could use currently prohibited substances—part of a pilot program aimed at quelling the ongoing overdose crisis. After approving a panel amendment April 18, the Senate Health and Welfare Committee voted 3–2 to advance the bill, H.72. On April 19, the Finance Committee also voted 4–2 to approve the bill and send it to the Senate floor for consideration. As of April 23, it had received ..read more

There aren’t any treatments for stimulant use disorder (SUD) that have strong evidence, but the one that has the most evidence is contingency management (CM). CM is based in the idea of positive behavioral reinforcement. Two or three a week you go to a clinic and pee in a cup, and if the results are negative for cocaine and methamphetamine you get some small incentive like a $10 gift card. Some programs use different structures, but generally if the urine sample is negative for stimulants at consecutive appointments, then the incentive value goes up a teeny increment. If the results are positi ..read more

In 1964, the United States surgeon general released the landmark Smoking and Health report, which highlighted smoking-related risks that were then little known. In the 60 years since, smoking rates have dramatically declined. Yet the US continues to struggle to eliminate smoking-related diseases, which still claim over 480,000 lives each year. US public health agencies are resistant to adopting technological advancements which could reduce harms for tens of millions of people who are unable or unwilling to quit nicotine. These agencies are thereby not only betraying their mission statements, b ..read more

Activists have gathered in Washington, DC to demand that Congress and President Biden take action to legalize marijuana federally and free people still incarcerated for it. As the 2024 presidential election campaign heats up, they’re reminding Biden of his past campaign promises to decriminalize marijuana and commit to racial justice. “We had about 200 individuals come with us,” Sarah Gersten, executive director of the Last Prisoner Project and one of the main organizers for the week of action, told Filter. The events were planned to coincide with 4/20, the unofficial cannabis holiday. “This ..read more

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