Editorials

Dear ASAM Members, Like many of you, I was disheartened to see Congress advance harmful health care reforms in its One Big Beautiful Bill. It amounts to a colossal reduction in federal support for Medicaid, the backbone of substance use disorder (SUD) treatment and mental health services in America.      Despite this outcome, I’m in awe of the extraordinary advocacy shown by our ASAM...

BY LOIS PARSHLEY EDITED BY LAUREN J. YOUNG At an addiction conference in Nashville, Tenn., in late April, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., spoke about his own experience with drug use. “Addiction is a source of misery. It’s also a symptom of misery,” he said. Kennedy’s very personal speech, however, ignored recent federal budget cuts and staffing...

EDITORIAL: APH Disparities in Overdose Deaths: Looking Back at Larochelle and Colleagues’ 2021 Paper By Nora D. Volkow, MD, Beth Han, PhD, MD, MPH, and Redonna K Chandler, PhD About the Authors: All authors are with the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD. The opioid overdose crisis, initially most heavily affecting non-Hispanic...

Guest Editorial: Remove Arbitrary Barrier to Evidence-based Treatment for Stimulant Use Disorder by David E. Smith, MD, DFASAM   Although the current overdose crisis in the US is almost universally referred to as the “opioid” or “fentanyl crisis”1,2, the overdose death rate associated with psychomotor stimulants, including methamphetamine and cocaine, has also dramatically increased in...