Research on "millionaire migration" shows that it rarely happens and that states could raise their top tax rates way higher. www.asanet.org/wp-content/u...

“the effort will include an “accountability center” for those with addictions.” They’re proposing these be involuntary. This is going to be a disaster.

Any fellow substance use-focused people on here watching Real Housewives of Salt Lake City? I am continually impressed with how Mary is handling her son's substance use disorder. She's doing a pretty dang good job being nonjudgmental & supportive, despite being a pretty judgmental person overall.

"In 2023, 557 teens died of opioid overdose, nearly threefold as many as in 2018, while adult opioid deaths only went up by 65% during this time, according to the study. Drug overdoses are now among the leading causes of death for US teenagers." www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Aaron Fox & Sarah Wakeman wrote great responses to an op-ed in the @nytimes.com arguing for involuntary addiction treatment. It is not only logistically infeasible given service shortages, it also violates human rights and is often ineffective & even dangerous. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/o...

A new crowdsourcing tool from @opioidpolicy.bsky.social for sharing/getting info on which pharmacies are dispensing buprenorphine (i.e., Suboxone): bupe.opioidpolicy.org

"'[R]age donations' have dried up." "While [nonprofits] grapple with a decrease in donations, the price for abortion care is rising, creating a perfect storm." "[C]an we actually keep this going?" #Texas #USA #Healthcare

This makes a lot of sense for many reasons, but one is the ability to afford vaccines. In Tunisia, the pediatric meningitis vaccine costs about a minimum wage worker’s monthly income. So most people don’t get it.

The summary is that they are trying to criminalize every aspect of homelessness so they can arrest & forcibly commit unhoused people. Currently(/before), there are not enough mental health & substance use treatment beds/facilities, and this does not add anything, which only leaves imprisoning people

NEW: In an unprecedented move, the NIH will soon disinvite dozens of scientists about to take positions on advisory councils that make final decisions on grant funding. NIH staff were told to select others aligned with the Trump administration and told to expect placements by political appointees.

I've been getting multiple daily invitations to review over the past month. I try to review 3 papers for every paper I submit as first or senior author. I have done much more than that this year already, and I really cannot do more. Is anyone else getting many more request than usual right now?

⚠️New study⚠️: Stigma training lessens prejudice towards people who use drugs, but stigma is more than just attitudes! Training does 🚫not🚫 clearly improve stigmatizing workplace culture or plans to provide better care among healthcare professionals. Read here: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lNMWAUkM2...

I need a medical sociologist/anthropologist to do extensive fieldwork on detox centers. On the one hand, I get why people use detox as a place to stop methadone or bup after years of treatment. But I worry when people believe this is the best first treatment step for opioid use disorder.

When we talk about problems of “administrative bloat” I’ve realized many people don’t know we’re specifically referring to deans/VPs/vice provosts/etc., and think we include the lower level university staff who keep the ship afloat in programs like academic advising and sponsored projects offices.

It's the one year book-iversary of Holding It Together, and I think its message is more urgent than ever. Because the book is about how the US came to rely on women as its safety net. But that story is fundamentally a story of what happens when billionaires don't want to pay their fair share. 1/

🚨 A new rule would let career scientists like NSF/NIH program officers be replaced by political appointees Already 14,000+ public comments, deadline is Friday 📣 Comments can be short. Courts consider them—and scientists with NSF/NIH experience are especially impactful Speak up! shorturl.at/WKuBj

HHS is further withholding funds by not releasing new grant awards; vastly delayed processes in routine carry forward requests; and intermittently removing the capacity for routine no cost extensions HHS is withholding money for lifesaving research

New from me: Everything feels overwhelming. But here is a tangible thing you can do: write a comment to oppose Trump's plan to convert 50,000 career civil servants into political appointees. Deadline is May 23. Please share! donmoynihan.substack.com/p/here-is-a-...

LOVING this Daily Show clip exposing how Trump and DOGE “streamlined” the federal workforce by firing true American patriots. Also...we’re not mad about the savage Musk hairline callout at 2:41. 👉 www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPeb...

R01 not discussed and a paper rejected. Today is also the 20th anniversary of my childhood best friend's death. I'm glad to be here even for the crappier days like today. Wish she could have been too.

"Though Kennedy previously praised interventions like [naloxone] as critical to saving lives, he now frames the crisis as one requiring deeper, spiritual & societal change rather than relying solely on "nuts and bolts" medical solutions." 1/3 www.latintimes.com/rfk-jr-end-g...

There are few things as cost effective as Narcan, especially in a country where (entirely preventable) opioid overdoses have been a leading cause of death for years. For every 6 kits distributed 1 OD is prevented. The $56M in this grant trained >66K people and distributed >282,500 kits in 2024 alone

Great article by @ethanbrooks.bsky.social about the underutilization of buprenorphine. Mallory's story highlights the benefits of this treatment for opioid addiction, while her brother's illustrates our failures in the treatment sector. www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

Uploading my proposal reviews for the third time because of multiple externally-imposed rules/changes/whatevers affecting NIH and a review meeting that should have happened months ago. SO much efficiency!

Excellent succinct takedown of bad science. I will be using this in my public health research methods class that starts next week. Perfect example of "🗑️ in, 🗑️ out" and why data quality and study design matter.

New study: We used EHR & focus groups to explore pain scores among people with co-occurring chronic pain and substance use disorders (SUD). We also considered the treatments they received, such as prescribed opioids, MAT, or physical therapy. 1/2 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

The trope that universities are "dependent" on the federal government fundamentally misunderstands how vital this partnership has been for the US. The private sector can't replace it. If we kill it, we're all worse off. From @donmoyn.bsky.social and me: donmoynihan.substack.com/p/are-univer...

Your periodic reminder that you have the right to find out why your health insurer denied your claim. We built a tool to help you do it: projects.propublica.org/claimfile/

Florida officials are demanding that universities send lists of all research that faculty/staff have published or publicly shared in the last 6 years, even if it wasn't publicly funded. It's not clear what they'll do with the lists, but my bet is on nothing good. www.tampabay.com/news/educati...

Trying to explain to my neighbors that the local reductions in property crime they see are actually mirroring overall reductions in Detroit city crime and most likely caused by rising high school graduation rates and income and not our neighborhood rent-a-cop is going… poorly!

Using IHS as a pawn in the removal of top scientists from federal positions is low. IHS is underfunded & understaffed. But this won't fix it. Note that IHS is still told to cut 35% from the budget item covering care for indigenous people needing specialized services outside of the IHS system.

A tricky thing about modern society is that no one has any idea when they don’t die. Like, the number of lives saved by controlling air pollution in America is probably over 200,000 per year, but the number of people who think their life was saved by controlling air pollution is zero.

ICYMI: You've probably heard about the vast array of agencies the HHS layoffs gutted, but somewhat less focused-on were the communications teams that were laid off. I talked to laid-off workers in the comms offices in 5 divisions of HHS, and all said their offices had been emptied or nearly so. 1/x

The letter appeals to rightwing interests in their plea to deregulate methadone: “please equip qualified practitioners with the tools they need to fight the drug cartels, too.” I’m not sure this angle will work, but I’m fine with being wrong on this one.

The entire National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) team at SAMHSA was terminated today. Do not listen to the platitudes of this administration when they say they care about drug overdose, addiction, mental health, or suicide.

NEW: GlobalX flight attendants were told they would fly rock bands, sports teams and sun-seekers. Then the company started expanding into deportation flights. “They didn’t tell us these people were going to be shackled, wrists to fucking ankles.”

New @jama.com study lends scientific evidence to what the streets know is true: drug busts lead to more overdose. It's time to abandon supply-side law enforcement interventions & support public health solutions that work (safe supply, other harm reduction strategies) jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

I feel like a lot of people do not understand that it costs so much more for everyone to just let people die preventable deaths than it does to pay for basic healthcare services

New study tests mobile intervention tool for opioid use disorder @efanningmadden.bsky.social today.wayne.edu/medicine/new...

You learn something new every day.

… law enforcement’s role in *lowering* deaths? I’ll just leave this here: “the observed number of fatal overdoses was two-fold higher than expected… within 7 days and 500 meters following opioid-related seizures [by law enforcement l]” pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37285563/

If we’re prosecuting people for their deadly roles in drug wars, then I have a few more names to add.

I was in a meeting about the future of research when a full professor in the basic sciences said “maybe I should call my congressperson. I’ve never done that before” and I tried not to let my jaw drop but, just… man. We (academics) can’t just wait until we’re directly impacted to engage in politics.

I wrote a short blog post about the tragedy currently unfolding in the evaluation industry. Trump is destroying vital research capacity and decades of instructional knowledge for pocket change. 1/x rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/the-irr...

Defending male mice and women mice from mouse gender ideology

New: Trump-controlled NIH begins targeted purge of LGBTQ+ research. insidemedicine.substack.com/p/new-trump-...

The idea that you can identify fraud with a magic algorithm looking at a spreadsheet is delusional thinking. Fraud, by its nature, requires deception to make a transaction look legitimate. You can't, for example, discover SS disability fraud simply by looking at payments. You just can't.

When you’re an expert in nothing (like Musk), it’s easy to lack intellectual humility and operate off of half baked assumptions because you do not understand the actual process of gaining and applying a specialized technical skill set.

This is 100% bullshit. There are no algorithms. Musk and his incel clown posse are not forensic accountants and do not know how to audit. Discovering fraud is a labor-intensive project that can never be done by looking at payments alone. This is just a thinly-veiled rationale to gut Social Security.