The Latest News from Our Field

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday its graphic ad campaign featuring the health consequences of smoking has been successful, and plans more ads for 2013.

The Affordable Care Act is leading to changes, both now and in 2014, for people with private health insurance who have a substance use disorder.

Two marijuana-related incidents before and during the Olympics are putting the spotlight on athletes and illegal drug use, according to USA Today.

A bill passed by Massachusetts lawmakers last week requires doctors to sign up for and use the state’s prescription monitoring program. The measure is awaiting the signature of Governor Deval Patrick.

The number of marijuana plants that have been eradicated nationwide has dropped over the past three years, while the amount of bulk processed marijuana seized by authorities has doubled.

Substance abuse treatment centers say they expect to see increased drug and alcohol abuse in the wake of the shootings in Aurora, Colorado, according to The Denver Post.

Officials from 27 colleges are meeting this week to tackle the growing problem of prescription drug abuse among students.

All Walgreens pharmacies in Arizona will store certain prescription painkillers, including products containing oxycodone, in time-delayed safes. The new policy comes in response to a spike in prescription drug robberies.

Maine’s decision to retroactively limit Medicaid payments for buprenorphine to treat opiate addiction is likely to have disastrous consequences, warns the President of the Northern New England Society of Addiction Medicine.

A growing number of smokers are switching from cigarettes to small cigars, which are less expensive, but just as dangerous, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Tobacco sales to minors reached an all-time low last year, under a government inspection program aimed at reducing underage tobacco use.

Doctors often miss alcohol problems in their patients who are not intoxicated at the time of their visit, a new study finds.

Combining caffeinated energy drinks with alcohol can lead to risky sex for college students, new research suggests.

Community-based residential rehabilitation programs are only helpful in the short term for methamphetamine users, a new study suggests. Shorter detoxification programs are even less successful, Reuters reports.

Medicare recipients can receive free alcohol misuse screening and counseling, as well as certain programs to help people quit smoking, under the Affordable Care Act. These are some of the ways in which the new healthcare law affects people with substance use disorders who are covered by public insurance programs, according to The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati.

Arizona has received a $7.5 million federal grant to help primary care providers identify patients at risk for, or who have, underlying substance abuse problems that might otherwise go undetected and untreated.

The San Francisco Police Department is reducing enforcement of drug crimes, according to The Wall Street Journal. The decrease in drug arrests reflects a shift to focusing on violent crime, as well as budget cuts, the department says.

Several recent studies are shedding light on why athletes may be more prone than the general population to substance abuse, eating disorders and suicide. The findings may have implications for athletes retiring after the Summer Olympics, Bloomberg Businessweek reports.

Almost one-third of prescriptions paid for by Ohio’s insurance fund for injured workers last year were for painkillers. The state has seen a 37 percent increase in the use of such drugs among injured employees over the past 10 years.

New, harsher drunk driving laws go into effect Wednesday in Washington, D.C. Mandatory minimum jail terms for people with blood-alcohol concentrations of .20 percent or higher have doubled. Commercial drivers, including taxi drivers, now have a blood-alcohol limit of .04 percent.

People seeking welfare benefits in Utah must now take an online drug-screening survey, which is designed to determine if they are likely to have a substance use disorder, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

In King County, Washington, a portion of all sales tax collected is dedicated to substance abuse, mental health and therapeutic court services. The Mental Illness and Drug Dependency Plan, passed by the King County Council in 2007, has helped prevent and reduce the involvement of people with substance use disorders and mental illness in the criminal justice system, says the plan’s project manager.

Colombia’s cocaine production dropped 25 percent from the previous year, the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy announced Monday. Peru and Bolivia are now the world’s top producers of the drug.

The Affordable Care Act makes changes to the health insurance system and to health insurance benefits, which may affect the cost of insurance and healthcare for people with substance use disorders, according to The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati.

Party buses, promoted as a safe way to transport teens and adults to nightclubs and other hot spots, turn a blind eye to teen drinking, according to critics. The vehicles also dump hard-drinking partygoers in neighborhoods that don’t want them, the San Jose Mercury News reports.