The Latest News from Our Field

The Chinese government’s ban on certain chemicals has led to a decrease in the synthetic drug flakka in Florida, according to Drug Enforcement Administration officials. China banned 115 chemicals in October.

A new study finds a link between teens’ exposure to alcohol ads and how much of those brands they drink.

Manchester, New Hampshire has opened the doors of its fire stations to people addicted to opioids, in an effort to address its community’s opioid crisis.

Top headlines of the week from Friday, September 2- Thursday, September 8, 2016.

A new nationwide study will follow thousands of children for 10 years, starting in elementary school, in an attempt to answer questions about the risks and protective factors for adolescent substance use on the developing brain. The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study will track exposure to substances, academic achievement, cognitive skills, mental health, brain structure and function, and many other variables.

Forty-four states will receive a total of $53 million in grants from the Obama Administration to fight the opioid epidemic, the Los Angeles Times reports. Administration officials are calling on legislators to approve $1.1 billion requested by President Obama to increase addiction treatment.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reporting a 426 percent increase in seized drugs that tested positive for fentanyl between 2013 and 2014, according to NPR. The number of deaths involving fentanyl and other synthetic opioids increased 79 percent during that period.

The Drug Enforcement Administration announced kratom, a plant-based drug with opioid-like effects, will become a Schedule I drug.

TRICARE, which provides health coverage for active duty and retired service members, their families, and survivors, will expand treatment for substance abuse and mental health care. Almost 9.4 million people are covered under the program.

The American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending that pediatricians consider offering medication-assisted treatment, such as buprenorphine, for teen and young adult patients with severe opioid use disorders, USA Today reports.

The Food and Drug Administration has stepped up warnings about the dangers of combining opioid painkillers with benzodiazepine sedatives. The agency is requiring new warnings on labels for opioids such as oxycodone, hydrocodone and morphine, as well as for benzodiazepines such as alprazolam and diazepam.

Prescription drug monitoring databases are assisting states in battling the opioid epidemic, according to The Wall Street Journal.

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has sent a letter to every doctor in the country, asking for their help in solving the opioid epidemic, CNN reports.

Children and teens who are diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and take medication for the condition are less likely to have a substance use disorder than youth with ADHD who don’t take medication, a new study finds.

A new study suggests restrictions put into place by the U.S. government on a chemical needed to produce cocaine have led to a reduced use of the drug in the past decade. Mexican police action against a company importing pseudoephedrine, which is used to make meth, also contributed to the decline.

An experimental drug that relieves pain like morphine but is not addictive showed promise in a study of mice, the Los Angeles Times reports.

If a tobacco company changes a label for a product, the Food and Drug Administration cannot consider it a new product for regulatory purposes, a federal judge ruled this week.

A new study suggests that having health coaches deliver a drug and alcohol screening program to Medicaid patients can save money, while significantly reducing inpatient hospital days. The program, known as Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT), can help many people with risky or problem drinking and drug use, says study co-author Richard L. Brown, MD, MPH, Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

U.S. college students are more likely to drink and less likely to smoke than their peers who aren’t enrolled in school, a new survey finds. College students are also more likely to binge drink than 18- to 22-year-olds who are not in college.

Smokers who have to walk farther to buy cigarettes are more likely to quit, a new study suggests. Researchers found that for every one-third of a mile smokers had to walk to the nearest tobacco outlet, there was a 20 to 60 percent increase in the odds they would stop smoking.

Appalachia, which has long been dealing with an epidemic of prescription opioid abuse, is now seeing an influx of heroin, The Courier-Journal reports.

Three U.S. senators have introduced a bill that would require doctors to use prescription drug monitoring programs before they prescribe painkillers. The Prescription Drug Monitoring Act is co-sponsored by Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Angus King of Maine.

A new study finds an increased risk of suicide attempts in teens is associated with prescription drug abuse, Reuters reports. Teens who said they used prescription drugs for non-medical purposes at the start of the study were almost three times as likely to report a suicide attempt a year later.

The incidence of babies born in the United States with neonatal abstinence syndrome quadrupled from 1999 to 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Many doctors feel ill-equipped to counsel their patients about the potential medical uses of marijuana, USA Today reports. Some states are establishing physician training programs to address marijuana’s health effects.