This makes zero sense in an opioid crisis. Who wants this? Are doctors and patients saying that the array opioid medications is incomplete? What's driving this? Public health? Ideology? Market forces? Why are only 4 legislators speaking up? You fill in the blanks.

I was perusing past year's articles in Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly and came across these two: Achieving a 15% Relapse Rate: A Review of Collegiate Recovery and Physician Health Programs A Perspective from the Field: The Disconnect between Abstinence-Based Programs and the Use of Motivational Interviewing in Treating Substance Use Disorders Achieving a 15% relapse rate … Continue reading Should addiction treatment prefer abstinence?

From Addiction: . . . whether it is truly an accurate model of human addictive behaviour is more questionable. It is certainly true that numerous studies since Rat Park have shown the importance of environment in influencing human drug use, particularly in early years, but when considering socio-ecological models of health, drug use, drug choice, … Continue reading Policy change requires a good story

A friend shared this obituary with me today. I don't know anything about Maddie beyond what's shared in her obituary, but it's has to be the most beautifully written obituary I've ever seen. Addiction afflicts beautiful, good people and it sounds like she was one of them. It is impossible to capture a person in … Continue reading praying, rooting, empathy, support, compassion and respect

Framing the national drug problem around opioids misses the bigger target. The future of the national drug problem is more drugs used by more drug users – not simply prescription misuse or even opioids but instead globally produced illegal synthetic drugs as is now common in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. A focus exclusively on … Continue reading Sentences to ponder

“Vancouver is a city with a lot of harm-reduction tools in its tool box and, still, we’ve barely slowed the wave of overdoses,” Mr. Robertson said. Mr. Robertson is Vancouver's outgoing mayor. He reflected on his experience managing the city through the opioid crisis. Number of times the article mentions recovery = 0 Number of times … Continue reading Sentences to ponder

No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up. —Lily Tomlin From the Financial Times: A billionaire pharmaceuticals executive who has been blamed for spurring the US opioid crisis stands to profit from the epidemic after he patented a new treatment for drug addicts. Richard Sackler, whose family owns Purdue Pharma, the … Continue reading No matter how cynical you become . . .

UPDATE: looks like this study has been retracted. I'll post more, when I know more about why. UPDATE 2: German Lopez has an update here. A new meta-analysis of research on supervised injection sites delivers some disappointing conclusions for advocates: One of the aims of MSICs (Medically Supervised Injection Centres) is to reduce harms associated … Continue reading New study casts doubt about injection site effectiveness

So, the other night I posted about cash-only buprenorphine practices. The next morning I find this in my mail. Consulting services to help establish turn-key buprenorphine clinics with cash revenue models that use toxicology services to generate revenue and provide aggressive risk management. (It's worth noting that I also get emails about treatment valuation conferences/services … Continue reading The treatment hustle behind the scenes

Apparently, twitter-bots are targeting more than elections: Social media accounts run by internet robots may be driving much of the discussion around the health threats posed by e-cigarettes, according to a study led by San Diego State University researchers, who also found most of the automated messages were positive toward vaping. More than 70 percent … Continue reading Vaping draws strong support — from bots