In Northern California's Shasta County, a growing number of young adults are consumed by heroin addiction. The problem has quickly grown in the past two years and, some say, is approaching methamphetamine’s popularity. The surge in drug use has fueled a rise in crime levels as well.
In far Northern California, which already is besieged by methamphetamine, law enforcement, doctors and community leaders have noticed another drug is snaking its way back into the black market’s customer base: Heroin.
Heroin addiction grabbed the national spotlight recently after famed actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died on Super Bowl Sunday. He was almost certainly not alone that day — about 100 Americans die every day from drug overdoses. Can anything be done to stop this?
At the center of one of the great medical controversies of our time, the mishmash around pain medication and addiction to prescription drugs has caused alarm in law enforcement and the public. But the realities of patients who have chronic pain problems, chronic addiction problems, or both, are not
More governors to refuse Medicaid expansion under Obamacare; evidence that Medicaid improves health; problems with methadone and more from our Daily Briefing.
How many times do you see pain patients who aren’t addicted represented in stories about prescription painkillers? Maia Szalavitz weighs in.
Fixing Medicare without paying for it, health reform's insurance rebates, and controversial distribution of a heroin overdose antidote, plus more from our Daily Briefing.
In the past, the study of addiction has often been focused on substances — like heroin, marijuana and alcohol. But experts in the field now believe that addiction begins with the “reward circuitry” in the brain rather than the substances themselves.
Before he was busted for prescribing drugs over the Internet, Dr. Stephen Hollis wrote 43,930 prescriptions for drugs in just one year, about about 170 scrips every workday. How is that even possible? Hollis tells me how.
Do you want to better report on drug addiction and treatment? Avoid having Slate’s Jack Shafer feature your work in his Stupid Drug Story of the Week feature? Then follow these 15 tips from veteran journalist Maia Szalavitz.
