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Substance Use/Addiction

Veterans were once half as likely as the general population to land in prison. Now, they're twice as likely. State and local officials are trying to prevent this from happening.
The bills will make it easier to distribute the opioid reversal drug Narcan, create a curriculum on the dangers of certain drugs, fund a coordinated crisis services system, establish a task force to study alcohol pricing and addiction services, and more.
Stories and statistics point to mixed success since the new 3-digit number launched last July.
Everything from fatal overdoses to the number of people suffering from severe depression has been growing at alarming rates. Counties have been providing services but insist that Washington must do more.
The death rate in the state’s prisons increased 34.6 percent from 2018 to 2022, which saw 135 deaths. This year is surpassing 2022’s rate even as the pandemic has waned and physical mail was stopped last year.
Court officials are slowly moving away from the belief that abstinence is the only path to addiction recovery. However, a study found that while more than 90 percent of drug courts allowed medication treatments, 1 in 4 still overruled medication decisions.
Mayor Matt Mahan recently held a press conference to further stress the city’s “zero tolerance policy” for public drug crimes and reinforced the need for arrests and treatments. But it remains unclear if the crackdown will make a meaningful impact.
States have information that counties need to better target their resources and services to reduce overdose risk and save lives. Improving data sharing is a good use of opioid settlement funds.
Approximately 20 percent of American workers have admitted to using recreational drugs while working remotely, and there has been an increase in working age Americans with substance use disorders since pre-pandemic.
In 1980, the THC content of marijuana was less than 1.5 percent, while some of today’s varieties can be found with more than 30 percent. In 2021, 16.3 million people had experienced a marijuana use disorder.
A new report from RAND Corporation argues that progress against opioid drug abuse and addiction is best understood — and addressed — in the context of everything that comes with it through an ecosystem view.
COVID is far from the only explanation for the United States’ dismal trend line. Other diseases, along with drug overdoses, were also contributors, along with politics, policies and inequality.
City and county governments in Colorado are not allowed to banish the psychedelics industry from inside their borders, even if their residents don’t want it. They may, however, regulate the time, place and manner of its existence.
Two dozen states have active online sports betting and, while those states have reported record levels of wagering and revenues, they have questions about how to keep gambling responsible and get help to those who need it.
Ridership levels on the system’s Gold and Red lines were only 30 and 56 percent of pre-pandemic levels, respectively. Meanwhile, 22 people have died on Metro buses and trains since January and serious crime increased 24 percent last year.
Suicide, overdoses and intake of anxiety medications have all gone up during the pandemic. Counties are having to deal with those challenges and many others, at a time when many of them are losing population and face constrained resources.