This is the same Administration that pardoned the Silk Road founder, an online dark web drug trafficking site linked to 6 deaths. This is performative, likely illegal, & will do little to stop trafficking. U.S. kills 3 in strike on alleged drug boat from Venezuela, Trump says wapo.st/4nCzbQN

While walking away from anti-money laundering efforts, the Administration is relying more on military tactics in its counter narcotics efforts - a short sighted strategy. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

The vast majority of firearms seized in Mexico that can be traced, originate from the US www.nytimes.com/video/world/... www.nytimes.com/video/world/...

@reginalabelle.bsky.social will join TFAH on July 30 at 2 PM ET to discuss our Pain in the Nation report. Register today bit.ly/PitN2025Webi...

New commentary out from @brookings.edu - always great to collaborate with @holtgrave-health.bsky.social Progress under threat: The future of overdose prevention in the United States www.brookings.edu/articles/pro...

Important perspective from Brandon del Pozo about the need for law enforcement to show their faces and identify themselves in a democratic society. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

“He was dirty,” Mr. Musto said of the Salvadoran president. “He was corrupt. And now he’s sitting next to the president in the Oval Office and he’s got prime access to the leader of the free world.” www.nytimes.com/2025/06/30/u...

VEASEY: You've credited the 12 steps in your recovery. What's step 4? RFK JR: Making a fearless inventory VEASEY: Of ourselves. Do you remember step 12? RFK JR: We try to help other addicts VEASEY: Does cutting off treatment from people still suffering align with step 4 or step 12?

Excellent questioning by Congressman Marc Veasey on HHS’s proposed cuts to SAMHSA. The proposed HHS budget calls for a $500M cut to grant funding for mental health & substance use, cuts that will devastate the nation’s addiction response. youtu.be/jR4VVrIvIOQ?...

Overdose deaths of Black Bostonians dropped significantly in 2024. Here’s why www.masslive.com/news/2025/06...

Looking forward to this discussion about the Trump Administration’s approach to drug policy on July 8th. Register here for the virtual event: medicine.yale.edu/event/addict...

By cutting Medicaid and SAMHSA, the “backbone” of the nation’s public health response to mental health & addiction is in danger. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Latest Substack open.substack.com/pub/reginala...

BREAKING: The doctor charged with supplying Matthew Perry ketamine before the actor's death will plead guilty to drug charges.

The settlement with Purdue includes $850M to settle claims brought by victims. It also doesn’t include a waiver of future claims a/g the Sacklers.

How a Generation’s Struggle Led to a Record Surge in Homelessness www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/u...

C-Span is a national treaure that allows an unfiltered look at government. Now more than ever we must save @c-span.bsky.social www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Amazing job by @brianmannadk.bsky.social reporting on youth drug deaths. Age 20-24 broke the mold, beat fentanyl, returned to 10 yrs prior. Teens coming down, room to go, upstream mitigations needed. We need more answers on "how". Inside these data lie insights that will save lives. (1/3)

Sarah Stillman investigates a widespread crisis of deaths by starvation in America’s county jails. Most of the victims she identified had been arrested in the midst of a mental-health crisis, often on petty charges tied to their psychiatric distress.

RFK Jr. wants to Make America Healthy Again. But he's ignoring the country's leading cause of preventable deaths: smoking.

Deaths were dropping even faster among young people, with some under-35 age groups seeing a 47 percent drop in fatal overdoses. This is immediate results delivered by Biden-Harris resulting in thousands of lives saved. 3/ www.npr.org/2025/06/10/n...

House Rules Committee hearing today on the SUPPORT Act is an example of the shell game of authorizing programs that won’t be funded & can’t be administered w/out staffing. $1B in HHS funding has been clawed back & 20,000 HHS employees have lost jobs-not including Medicaid or other budget proposals.

Preventing harm is a cornerstone of public health, even if success is less visible or harder to measure. But the consequences of the thoughtless slashing to public health funding will be unmistakable and long-lasting. apnews.com/article/publ...

SecState Rubio claims that no on has died because of USAID cuts and suggested that I had lied in my reporting. So here I show him photos of specific children who have died because of the Trump administration's reckless cancelation of aid: www.nytimes.com/2025/05/31/o...

By focusing solely on drug seizures as a measure of success, this administration overlooks the broader, more meaningful indicators of progress in drug policy. The Administration’s narrow approach will ultimately undermine long-term solutions and cost lives. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

New Office of National Drug Control Policy budget request is online. Two key takeaways - moves the High Intensity Drug Trafficking & Drug Free Communities programs to DOJ & HHS. This was in Project 2025 and attempted in the 1st Trump Administration. www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...

Changing drug use trends appear to have health consequences. See the latest from my team on the transition to fentanyl smoking in Los Angeles and Denver, CA. authors.elsevier.com/c/1lAwq3PEro... Free access in link.

Important work from the @prisonpolicy.org about limitations on health care in prisons linked to copays news.prisonpolicy.org/t/r-e-thhjti...

The 17-person team of statisticians and scientists at the National Survey on Drug Use and Health are all out of jobs. Researchers around the country use the data to understand behavioral health.

Does Fentanyl Test Strip Use Reduce Overdose Risk? "was not associated with a reduction in nonfatal overdose rates compared with nonuse among people who use drugs but was linked to a significant increase in overdose risk reduction behaviors" www.medscape.com/viewarticle/...

MAHA report released. It chronicles a list of dire facts about US health, and provides a list of technocratic responses at the end. The report notes the decline in US life expectancy w/out mentioning the connection this has to overdoses and alcohol related disease. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/u...

House passes reconciliation bill - if signed into law, 8.7 million people will lose Medicaid, while adding $2.4 trillion over 10 years to the national debt. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

The DEA’s National Drug Threat Assessment - issued just 6 days ago - doesn’t back this up. www.dea.gov/sites/defaul...

Efforts to drive down the smoking rate have worked: We're at a 75-year low for smoking and a 25-year low for vaping. Now the CDC office credited with some of that work is gone. I met with teens in West Virginia who were sad to see their anti-vaping group cut: www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/h...

Latest piece on the impact of the 1st 100 days of the Trump Administration on addiction policy. Thank you Journal of Addiction Medicine & David Fiellin. journals.lww.com/journaladdic...

While overdose death rates remain high, newly released data show the US is on the right track to bring rates down further. Now isn’t the time to retreat from what is working. Latest piece w/David Holtgrave oneill.law.georgetown.edu/reflections-...

Important piece by three state health secretaries on dire impact cuts to Medicaid will have on the progress made in reducing overdose deaths. www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/f...

Looking forward to this discussion with @brandondelpozo.bsky.social

The Week in Drug Policy open.substack.com/pub/reginala...

Cutting naloxone funding is short sighted, and most importantly, will cost lives www.cnn.com/2025/04/30/h...

C-SPAN is a national treasure and streaming companies should pay the 7cents/month it would cost them to make it available. Thanks to Karen Tumulty for writing this. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

HHS may try again to merge the National Institute on Drug Abuse & the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism - will objections be raised again by the alcohol industry? See story from 2012 - NIH Backs Off Plan to Merge Addiction Institutes www.science.org/content/arti...

Good piece by @alecmac.bsky.social on the decimation of the federal government’s data collection - if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t matter www.propublica.org/article/trum...

New DAWN report out from HHS. DAWN collects data from emergency departments and is an early warning system to identify potentially dangerous drug trends. Unfortunately, it’s targeted for cuts by OMB. Report here library.samhsa.gov/product/drug...

In Health Affairs, @holtgrave-health.bsky.social and @reginalabelle.bsky.social call for urgent action to maintain a decline in drug-related fatalities: reinstate national goals, invest in treatment & harm reduction, and build a robust public health workforce. www.healthaffairs.org/content/fore...

Latest substack on the budget targets sent to HHS by OMB open.substack.com/pub/reginala...

This OMB doc to HHS sets budget targets & provides directives, ie, folding SAMHSA into the “Administration for a Healthy America” to focus on “childhood chronic diseases”. Ironic then that it proposes eliminating programs to prevent substance use disorder. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

The FDA is asking laid-off employees to temporarily return after mass cuts decimated the agency’s ability to penalize stores that sell cigarettes and vapes to minors.

New from Congress’s Joint Economic Committee - Minority on the important role Medicaid plays in providing access to OUD treatment for Americans. If states w/trigger laws lose federal Medicaid funds 100,000 people w/OUD will lose medication treatment. Report here www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cach...