Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly最新文献

I support all options being made available and allowing individuals to choose their path. The whole approach should be about choice – harm reduction, treatment, and self-help.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in a commentary published last week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, call for innovations in research and development of smoking cessation therapies. Cigarette smoking, while decreasing, kills nearly 500,000 Americans each year. The opioid overdose epidemic kills one-fifth of that. More than 28 million adults currently smoke in the United States. Most of them say they want to quit, but only 31% of those receive counseling and/or medications to do so. Less than 8% quit a year.

Not for the first time, the changes opioid treatment programs (OTPs) must make to comply with new regulations have been praised by OTPs themselves. Mark Parrino, president of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence told ADAW last week that most of the states' OTPs are already in compliance. Patti Juliana, Ph.D., who heads the federal Division of Pharmacologic Therapies at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, told him that 44 states are in alignment and compliance with the new rules. She meets with the State Opioid Treatment Authorities regularly. We caught up with Parrino at the COMPA Symposium in Schenectady, New York this month.

No longer can opioid treatment programs (OTPs) summarily discharge patients for non-payment, use of drugs or other reasons having to do with anything other than safety, at least not in New York. Most OTPs never did this, especially in New York, but the publication last month of new guidance from the state's Office of Addiction Services and Supports (OASAS) clearly delineates the circumstances under which a patient can be discharged against their will.

Patients with insurance coverage under Medicare — in particular, Medicare Advantage — or Medicaid are less likely to receive medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) because providers are just unwilling to treat them, according to a report released last month by the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG). The report repeatedly refers to “behavioral health,” so in this article, we do too.

The Addiction Health Services Research Conference will be held October 16-18 in San Francisco. For more information, go to https://www.ahsrconference.org/2024/

The CEO of the largest cannabis delivery company in California is shutting down and laying off its 500 workers, the San Francisco Chronicle reported last week. At one point worth $700 million, the company, Eaze, was called the “Uber of weed.” Like other cannabis startups, it may have just gotten too big. At one point the biggest cannabis delivery service in the world, it had problems soon after it grew, including a former Eaze CEO who plead guilty to credit card fraud.

Recovery housing, aka sober living facilities, have long existed as safe, supportive places designed for people with severe substance use conditions to live while they build recovery capital. In recent years, shifts in drug use patterns and changing public policy definitions have created challenges to the safe environment within recovery housing. One example of how this is unfolding is the California Sober Lifestyle in which people stop all drug use but cannabis.

Unless regulation doesn't curb the country's addiction to online sports betting, Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will ban it. Brazilians, who love both soccer and betting, have been spending their household money on it since it was legalized in 2018, Reuters reported on Oct. 6. The president, known as Lula, noted that it was not right for low-income families who get public funding to spend the money on bets. Last week, Brazil's Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA) published a list of sports betting companies licensed to operate in Brazil, which is now one of the fifth-largest betting markets in the world. Under new regulations, credit cards will not be allowed for use in betting. “Everyone knows that the person going to buy bread in the morning will make a small bet using the bread money,” Lula said. “But what I cannot allow is betting to turn into a disease, an addiction, and for people to become dependent on it, because I know people who lost their house and car.”

What's in a name? If it's the word “abuse,” this could “unintentionally harm the very individuals we strive to help,” according to the explanation by the (former) National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors (NASADAD), called, as of Oct. 3, the National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Agency Directors. The acronym is still the same.