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As Scott E. Hadland, M.D., senior author of a dramatic paper published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine puts it, drug use among adolescents is not getting more common — it's at its lowest in almost 50 years. But it's getting more deadly, due to fentanyl. In "The Overdose Crisis among U.S. Adolescents," by Hadland and lead author Joseph Friedman, Ph.D., the problem is laid out clearly: After guns and car crashes, overdose (OD) deaths are now the third leading cause of death among adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary manner by which states have been using Medicaid to expand access to substance use disorder (SUD) treatment may actually be making it more difficult for individuals to receive the services most appropriate to their needs, a newly released paper suggests. Moreover, this preferred strategy in many cases violates the law, authors with the National Health Law Program contend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An over‐reliance on federal block grants and "one‐off" funding initiatives has left the addiction treatment system under‐resourced to respond to an addiction crisis that stands to be at least as deadly as COVID‐19 during the span of the Biden administration, a trio of prominent researchers argue in a newly released policy paper. The authors suggest that the new administration and Congress should prioritize efforts to build on what they consider the most impactful developments in improving access and quality in addiction treatment, such as Medicaid expansion and parity mandates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about the concept of civil commitment for substance use disorders (SUDs), discussing a research paper released by Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. Topics discussed include the views of some people that addiction is a disease and its treatment should not be coerced; a paper by the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) on it; and the benefits of involuntary commitment laws for substance use disorders.