Covering Drugs

I often think about how difficult it is to find good information about addiction, drug use, recovery, drug policy, and advocacy around all these matters. There are so many sources providing incomplete and incorrect information, often very persuasively.

I’ve spoken with so many family members and members of the media struggling to find their way through this thicket of information.

Susan Stellin has done a real service for journalists and others, with her Covering Drugs project, a “resource guide listing key surveys, reports, data sets, studies, research hubs, and other information useful to journalists reporting on drugs and alcohol.”

She explains the challenge and her approach here:

There’s a lot of disagreement in the field, and in the data, and many knowledge gaps. It’s not hard to find two sets of studies that support opposite conclusions, and with the rapidly changing drug supply and patterns of use, older research can lose its relevance quickly.

I’ve tried to acknowledge these debates, and list reviews of research as much as possible, but for some topics I did include links to individual studies. This project inevitably involved some tough decisions about what to include or leave out, but I’ve tried to be objective and present a range of perspectives, pointing in directions for additional research and reporting.

Beyond creating a road map or reference guide to useful data, this also became a preservation project, as sources were altered or removed from U.S. government websites. Even when that has happened, many documents are still available elsewhere online, so I’ve linked to those options. (Many government publications include a public domain notice so they can be shared.)

Stellin, Susan (2026, March 3). Introducing Covering Drugs: A media resource guide. Reynolds Journalism Institute. https://rjionline.org/news/introducing-covering-drugs-a-media-resource-guide/

The project and the series of articles associated with it are well worth your time. You can find them all here.