Heroin

Advocacy groups have long pushed for making more naloxone available to the public as a way to prevent overdoses. The surgeon general's advisory gives that effort a big boost.

• By Francie Diep

Over 63,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2016.

• By Max Ufberg

Research is beginning to show that cheap strips can accurately detect deadly fentanyl, and encourages people to get high more cautiously.

• By Francie Diep

As the opioid epidemic spins out of control, a grassroots network of activists is fighting it at the source.

• By Mark Oprea

Could the program have driven some West Virginians to use heroin?

• By Francie Diep

• By Francie Diep

After 20 years of skyrocketing addiction rates, how can the United States get its pill problem under control?

• By Livia Gershon

Volunteers in inner cities launched the United States' first needle exchange programs, but now the need has moved to suburban and rural America.

• By Francie Diep

OxyContin, designed for cancer pain relief, became the drug prescribed for back and tooth aches.

• By Daniel J. McGraw

The disease model of addiction offers addicts several ways forward—including getting drunk to beat alcoholism.

• By Jordan Rosenfeld

Though a new generation of genetically engineered microbes is raising fears about home-brew heroin, a technology de-coupled from the whims of growing seasons could also mean cheaper, legal drugs.

• By Michael White

Seeing opioid addiction as a disease, instead of a moral failing, helps.

• By Francie Diep

New research finds a racial disparity.

• By Lauren Kirchner

As drug courts spread across the world, new standards and best practices aim to hold them all accountable.

• By Lauren Kirchner

Hepatitis C is common behind bars, but sick prisoners aren’t getting treatment.

• By Lauren Kirchner

New research suggests that maintaining methadone treatment in jails and prisons would save lives.

• By Lauren Kirchner

Hailed as the most compassionate way for the criminal justice system to deal with addicts, drug courts were designed to balance punishment with rehabilitation. But after 25 years, the verdict is in: Drug courts embolden judges to practice medicine without a license—and they put lives in danger.

• By Maia Szalavitz

An early look at a Pacific Standard story that's currently only available to subscribers.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Political opposition to needle exchanges, reproductive health services, and other public health fixtures has helped create an outbreak in Scott County, Indiana.

• By Noah Berlatsky

The New Jersey governor is against legalization, but it's unclear why.

• By Jay Livingston

Matt Bowden (sometimes known as Starboy, an "interdimensional traveler") helped create one of the most viral outbreaks of new drugs in history. He might also have the antidote.

• By Maia Szalavitz

As states crack down hard on pain prescriptions, some are seeing a resurgence in abuse of the harder stuff.

• By Lauren Kirchner

My book Love and Addiction, published in 1975, proved prescient in the decades that followed. How optimistic should we be as we look further ahead?

• By Stanton Peele

How sleight-of-hand—and obsessive-compulsive disorder—helped the guitarist shake 30 years of addiction.

• By Ted Scheinman