Pot, Teens and 40 Percent More Psychosis?

Maia Szalavitz
The “Drug Czar’s” office released a new study today and according to USA Today and the Washington Post’s reading of it, teen marijuana use raises the risk of mental illness by 40 percent.
But what the report and the media failed to examine is the complexity of this connection. While the report admits that many [...]

New Research Shows OxyContin Epidemic to be a Myth

Trevor Butterworth
The media and the Drug Enforcement Agency created a myth of widespread accidental addiction to OxyContin a new study of almost 28,000 drug addicts attending treatment centers across the United States shows. The research, published in the November 2007 issue of the Journal of American Psychiatry also demonstrates that:
most of the OxyContin use [...]

Did Rolling Stone Really Publish the Smartest Drug Story of the Year?

Trevor Butterworth
Slate’s Jack Shafer has described Ben Wallace-Well’s 15,000-word story for Rolling Stone - “How America Lost the War on Drugs” - as the “smartest drug story of the year:”
“If I were maximum dictator, I would force every newspaper editor, every magazine editor, and every television producer in the land to read Ben Wallace-Wells… [he] [...]

Vermont Demands Prescription Records

Trevor Butterworth
STATS Senior Fellow Maia Szalavitz writes on the Huffington Post about Vermont’s decision to force pharmacists to surrender prescription records (an issue first reported on by the blog Green Mountain Daily, which was picked up by the Daily Kos - and not, depressingly, by Vermont’s own fully employed media):
The rationale, natch, is the war [...]

So, What Made Me an Addict?

Maia Szalavitz
“Many people think they know what addiction is,” writes STATS’ Maia Szalavitz in the Washington Post, “but despite non-experts’ willingness to opine on its treatment and whether Britney or Lindsay’s rehab was tough enough, the term is still a battleground. Is addiction a disease? A moral weakness? A disorder caused by drug or alcohol [...]

Are Schools Drug “Infested?”

Maia Szalavitz
Contrasting reports on a new “study” by Columbia’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse: why some readers were better served by journalistic skepticism… more
Originally
published August 16, 2007

FDA Drug Standards: What’s Safe Enough?

Trevor Butterworth
From Wired: Why would the FDA allow a pharmaceutical company to continue to sell an apparently dangerous drug? The answer is not simple, and at a time when mistrust of the government’s relationship with the healthcare industry seems to be increasing, the subtleties can get lost in daily news reports… more
Originally published August 2, [...]

Avandia Vote a Rebuke to Media Alarmism

Trevor Butterworth
A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel recommended in a 22 to 1 to one vote that the diabetes drug Avandia remain on the market, with additional warnings about cardiac risk, but not the most extreme drug warning – a black box – in the FDA arsenal.
The recommendation, which is non-binding but almost certain [...]

Will One Joint Really Make You Schizoid?

Maia Szalavitz
Watching the media cover marijuana is fascinating, offering deep insight into conventional wisdom, bias and failure to properly place science in context. The coverage of a new study claiming that marijuana increases the risk of later psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia by 40% displays many of these flaws… more
Originally published July 30, 2007