Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly最新文献

The shutdown is over, which you have definitely heard about. President Trump signed into law the continuing resolution to keep the government open at fiscal year 2025 levels through Jan. 30, 2026. To read the bill, go to https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/5371. It did not resolve the reasons for the shutdown: the Democrats' refusal to sign it unless Affordable Care Act subsidies, which the Republicans removed this spring in H.R. 1, were returned. Currently, people in this very popular program are facing big increases in premiums. Whether anything will be done about it is unclear. Last week, Mehmet Oz, M.D., director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told Americans that if they want cheaper insurance premiums, they should be healthier. Meanwhile, the timing of future appropriations bills is unclear.

Last week, Brandon Glass filed suit against Captain Denver McCool, who heads the jail department in Shelby County, Alabama. Glass, a methadone patient, was refused medication by McCool. The lawsuit, filed in United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, states that McCool “failed to provide adequate medical care for individuals with Opioid Use Disorder,” a violation of the 8th amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment.

San Francisco's gradual shift toward a more enforcement-focused approach to combating the city's drug crisis continues, with the latest announcement from the city administration sharing plans for a police-involved sobering center to link drug users to treatment. A researcher and longtime observer of drug policy in the Bay Area characterizes the approach of Mayor Daniel Lurie's administration as seeking a middle ground between a carceral drug war and past leadership's “anything goes” mindset that many blame for damaging the city's everyday quality of life.

On October 15, Allegra Schorr, president of the Coalition of Medication-Assisted Treatment Providers and Advocates (COMPA), explained the relevance of Medicaid cuts to the New York State Opioid Settlement Fun Advisory Board.

It's been many years since pharmaceutical companies – manufacturers and distributors – agreed to pay billions in settlement dollars to Americans to help them pay for the opioid epidemic, caused initially by the prescription opioids they got paid for. There was an assumption that the payments, over the course of years, would go to victims of the opioid epidemic. The payments, totaling at least $50 billion, would go to states and localities (mainly, counties). And states would decide how the payments would be spent.

Among the sessions at last week's annual meeting of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry (AAAP) held in San Francisco: behavioral (sex, gambling, and social media). For this update on treatment and research, presenters focused on the lack of research on the topic. The presentation included diagnosis and treatment issues. There are psychotherapeutic, self-help, and pharmaceutical treatments, according to the researchers, who each discussed a case example from their own clinical work. The relatively new phenomenon of social media addiction includes a broad array of harmful use on digital devices. There are common presenting signs and symptoms, the researchers noted. There are screening and assessment tools that can help providers discern between conventional use and harmful use, as well as a review of treatment resources and interventions. The AAAP concluded with its own presentation, and noted that 12-step approaches work as well. It's important to remember that there are co-morbid conditions with behavioral addictions, including psychiatric and neurological disorders.

Researchers have found that structural racism could be a root cause in many cases of opioid overdose deaths. How this happens is unclear, but racism and overdoses can be connected. The mechanism for the connection is unknown but future research is needed to develop prevention policies and programs.

Is social media addiction the next frontier for lawsuits? With groups like Meta (Facebook) sitting on lots of money, it's quite possible, especially as school districts across the country are themselves facing threats for social media use – and banning phones in the classroom as a result. Why would schools ban phones? Not because the phones themselves are addictive, but what's on them, is. The The DeKalb County School District is suing TikTok, Meta, Snap, YouTube, and other companies because it has spent more than $4.3 million trying to remedy the harm caused by its students' addiction to social media. It needs more money to keep up the fight, according to an article published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution November 11. (https://www.ajc.com/news/2025/11/dekalb-school-district-reveals-4m-social-media-addiction-problem/).

The 36th annual national leadership forum of CADCA will be held February 2-5, 2026 in National Harbor, Maryland. For more information, go to https://www.cadca.org/signature-events/

Could the highly disappointing utilization of medication treatments for alcohol use disorder (AUD) be reversed if one of the currently approved treatments were to be made available over the counter? Would any drug company see enough of a financial incentive to carry such a proposal forward?