Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly最新文献

In “Availability of Medications for Opioid Use Disorder in U.S. Psychiatric Hospitals,” Shawn M. Cohen, M.D., and colleagues expose the inadequacy of methadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone in psychiatric hospitals. The study, published as a research letter in JAMA Network Open this month, consisted of a cross-sectional analysis of facility-level responses to the 2022 National Substance Use and Mental Health Services Survey. The study sample included all facilities in the U.S. that self-reported their facility type as a psychiatric hospital and reported their availability of medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD).

I assume nothing. Having grown up surrounded by pessimists, I promised myself that I would be an optimist. I am also very mindful that those who are predicting what will happen over the next four years will likely be wrong. It is with this in mind that I offer some drug policy ideas for consideration.

The International Nurses Society on Addiction Annual Educational Conference will be held March 11-14, 2025 in Disney Springs, Florida. For more information, go to https://www.intnsa.org/conference/

President-Elect Trump has announced his cabinet choices with rapid succession. In the health arena, they are Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to head the federal Department of Health and Human Services, and Mehmet Oz, M.D. to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Many people have asked us what will happen at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). We don't know! We do remember Elinore McCance Katz, M.D., who headed SAMHSA under the first Trump Administration, and then went to the Drug Enforcement Administration. She made herself available for interviews, then and in previous administrations. And she was a powerful spokeswoman for the agency in the face of Congressional budget-cutters. We would refer readers to last week's lead which discusses the importance of showing your agency's impact and value (see ADAW https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adaw.34324). Stay tuned.

Addiction researchers continue to preach caution amid a flurry of findings suggesting that popular weight-loss medications such as semaglutide could have important applications in treating substance use disorders (SUDs). The latest report found a decreased risk of alcohol use disorder-related hospitalization in patients who use semaglutide or liraglutide and its lead investigator is echoing the call for evidence from randomized trials to confirm conclusions drawn from observational studies.

The Association for Multidisciplinary Education and Research in Substance use and Addiction (AMERSA) promised that its conference, held earlier this month in Chicago, would help participants use new approaches, advocate for policy change, recognize the important of interdisciplinary education and more. It did not fail, reports Stefan Kertesz, M.D., professor of preventive medicine at the University of Alabama and an advocate for the homeless, people with pain, drug users and an active participant in the conference.

As harm reduction – with its varied definitions – becomes more mainstream, establishment medical journals are providing information to help clinicians. In the November 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), one article focuses on how to tell patients who have opioid use disorder (OUD) about harm reduction and another provides an overview of different strategies to achieve this.

Regina LaBelle, director of the Center on Addiction and Public Policy at the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University Law Center, released her predictions on what steps the Trump administration could take. Her report came out November 7, the day after the election. Here is a summary.

A new report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has found that LGB+ youth are more likely than straight youth to have major depression and serious thoughts of suicide. But patterns of substance use by sexual identity were nuanced.

States that enacted Medicaid expansion have seen an increase in the likelihood that outpatients with opioid use disorder (OUD) receive one of the evidence-based medication treatments. The magnitude of the increase suggests, however, that Medicaid expansion alone has not been a sufficient strategy for realizing the potential of medications for OUD (MOUD).