Steve Johnstone trusted his doctors. A former army medic who served in Afghanistan, he assumed the people prescribing his cannabis knew what they were doing. A Four Corners investigation, published by ABC News on 5 October, shows he barely spoke to any of them. His case offers a stark look at how a medicinal cannabis...
Psilocybin FDA approval has not happened yet, but the groundwork is already being laid. As of June 2026, the US Food and Drug Administration has not approved psilocybin for any use. Even so, the drug holds breakthrough status for major depressive disorder and treatment resistant depression. That label is designed to speed up development and...
Arizona has launched a kratom lawsuit against the company behind Feel Free, a flavoured tonic that the state says hides its risks behind a wellness image. Attorney General Kris Mayes filed the complaint against Botanic Tonics, LLC in Maricopa County Superior Court on 23 September 2026. The announcement calls it a first in the nation....
Police in Oregon have shut down a suspected drug trafficking organisation after discovering an estimated $20 million worth of illegal marijuana spread across six sites in Marion and Clackamas counties. Oregon State Police (OSP) announced the results of the operation on 11 September. The scale of what officers found is hard to ignore. Over three...
Hemp is moving from the field to the feed trough. The science that should guide the move is lagging behind. Before 2014, US hemp acreage stood at zero. By 2020 it had climbed to a peak of around 400,000 acres. Regulators have now taken the first steps towards letting the crop into animal feed. That...
European lawmakers have sent a firm message about drug trafficking networks. On Thursday, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for a coordinated, EU wide response. The vote was 601 to 4, with 5 abstentions. Very few MEPs stood in the way. Why MEPs say action cannot wait Members say drug trafficking networks are becoming...
The Food and Drug Administration has not approved a single psychedelic drug for medical use. Yet on Monday afternoon it opened a public hearing dedicated entirely to how psychedelic therapy should eventually reach patients. The session ran from 12:30 to 4:30pm Eastern. It took place at the agency’s White Oak campus in Silver Spring, with...
The White House has released its annual list of major drug producing countries for fiscal year 2027, naming 23 nations it considers central to the global trade in illegal narcotics. The determination, submitted to Congress on 15 September 2026, covers a wide spread of territory, from Afghanistan and Burma in Asia to Mexico, Colombia and...
A new integrated solution for drug and alcohol abstinence monitoring has launched in the UK, pairing DrugPatch’s wearable drug testing patch with SCRAM Remote Breath’s portable alcohol monitoring. Why Snapshot Testing Falls Short Urine screens, oral fluid tests and occasional breathalysers all share the same weakness: they only capture a moment in time. A missed...
A new study in JAMA Network Open looked at what happens when states try to regulate vaping through directory laws, and the answer isn’t good news for anyone hoping this approach would curb flavored e-cigarette sales among teens. Quick answer: Researchers tracked three states with e-cigarette directory laws (Alabama, Oklahoma, Louisiana) against 31 states without...