Addiction

By the time Jon Kostas was 25, he was desperate to beat his alcohol addiction. He had started drinking at age 13 and had cycled through different treatments—going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, taking pharmaceutical medications, and trying in-patient rehab—but nothing worked. Ever since 2015, however, when he took part in a clinical trial that combined … Read more

Today’s illicit drug supply is riskier than ever, experts say. It’s often contaminated by different dangerous substances—from the potent opioid fentanyl, to the horse tranquilizer xylazine, to benzodiazepines—which makes using illegal drugs more unpredictable and raises the risk of overdose. These risks make effective treatments indispensable. However, one of the most successful treatments for opioid … Read more

Since the U.S. drug war was declared in 1971, various drugs have been identified as public enemy number one—from crack cocaine, in the 1980s, to prescription opioids in the early 2000s. Today, the primary villain is fentanyl, a synthetic opioid about 50 times more potent than heroin. In 2021, more than 71,000 people in the … Read more

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is moving forward with plans to ban menthol cigarettes and all flavored cigars—policies that agency officials say could help prevent some of the roughly 500,000 U.S. deaths linked to tobacco each year. “The actions we are proposing can help significantly reduce youth initiation and increase the chances that … Read more