Prevention Education

Millions of people use cocaine every year. Doctors still have no reliable cocaine addiction treatment to offer them. A sweeping new review from the University of Bristol pooled data from 163 clinical trials and tested 89 different medicines. The verdict leaves little room for doubt. Not one drug shows convincing evidence that it works. A Widespread Problem With No Licensed...

Police forces across England and Wales recorded 384 incidents of alcohol related domestic abuse during this year’s World Cup. Officers gathered the figures between 11 June and 20 July 2026. The work forms part of a national strategy to understand how football tournaments can influence patterns of abuse in the home. Even so, the numbers do not capture every domestic...

Medetomidine fentanyl mixtures are now turning up on US streets, and doctors say naloxone cannot fix the problem. Medetomidine is a drug meant to sedate animals before surgery. It was never approved for use in people, and it does not respond to naloxone the way opioids do. Doctors are watching patients go into a withdrawal syndrome so severe it can...

Every alert issued by Australia’s drug early warning networks starts with the same uncomfortable fact. Someone has already taken a substance nobody could be certain about. New research published in the International Journal of Drug Policy examines how these networks operate. It looks at the state based systems that predate them, and at the national Prompt Response Network that now...

Millions of people reach for paracetamol, ibuprofen or a cold and flu remedy without a second thought. Yet doctors are increasingly warning that OTC medications and liver damage are more closely connected than most of us realise. These products sit in almost every bathroom cabinet in the country. Because they are so easy to buy, it becomes simple to lose...

More than a million Americans have died from drug overdoses since the turn of the century. Synthetic opioids keep claiming lives across the country. Yet one chapter of war on drugs history rarely enters the conversation. It may hold real answers for tackling the modern opioid crisis. A War on Drugs History Nobody Expected Fifty five years ago this year,...

Opioid overdose prevention has never been more urgent. In England and Wales, opioids and opiates were linked to 2,621 drug poisoning deaths in 2024, close to half of all drug poisoning deaths recorded that year, and part of the highest overall total since records began in 1993. Behind every one of those figures is a family changed forever, which is...

Alcohol-related liver disease is climbing fast. In the United States, the death rate nearly doubled between 1999 and 2022, rising from 6.7 to 12.5 per 100,000 people. Researchers linked more than 436,000 deaths to this trend. Between 2018 and 2022, the death rate climbed by almost 9% a year. A 2026 JAMA review by liver specialists from Denmark, Finland and...

For many people, cannabis now sits in the same mental basket as a glass of wine or a herbal sleep aid: familiar, legal in some places, and often marketed as a “natural” way to unwind. But a major new brain‑imaging study of more than 1,000 young adults suggests that heavy cannabis use may quietly weaken one of the mind’s most...

Most of us have heard at least one piece of hangover wisdom passed down at the pub. Drink beer before wine. Eat a greasy fry up before bed. A strong coffee will sort you right out. Unfortunately, many of these long standing hangover myths do more harm than good. Some could even put your health at risk. Research suggests that...

Getting sober takes courage. Staying sober takes a plan, and a clear eyed commitment to one goal: complete disengagement from drugs and alcohol. Not cutting back. Not “knowing your limits.” Full stop. Recovery isn’t a condition you keep in check for the rest of your life. It’s something you walk away from, permanently. That shift starts earlier than most people...

The European Union Drugs Agency has published its European Drug Report 2026, drawing on data from 29 countries. Overall, the picture it paints is not encouraging. Illicit drugs remain widely available, markets keep diversifying, and thousands of people are still dying every year. None of this will surprise anyone who works in drug prevention in Europe. It simply confirms what...

A new Norwegian study shows that alcohol absorption after bariatric surgery nearly doubles. Researchers say this finding should change how doctors counsel patients before they go under the knife. Magnus Strømmen led the research at the Centre for Obesity Research at St Olavs Hospital and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. His team followed 33 adults who had either...

Millions of Britons are heading outdoors as temperatures soar this week. For many, a cold drink feels like a natural part of the occasion. But health professionals are sounding a clear warning. The combination of hot weather and alcohol is more dangerous than most people appreciate, and the effects can catch even careful drinkers off guard. It is not simply...

Why Doctors Are Warning About Alcohol as Europe’s Heatwave Intensifies Europe is sweating through a record breaking heatwave. Doctors are issuing fresh warnings about a habit many people don’t think twice about: drinking in a heatwave. In Paris, hospitals reported a four times increase in cardiac arrests within a single 24 hour window. Authorities responded by temporarily banning public drinking...

More than one in seven pregnant women in the United States reported drinking during pregnancy in the past month. The CDC published these figures in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report in June 2026. The data paints a sobering picture of an ongoing, and worsening, public health problem. Researchers drew on survey responses from over 8,500 pregnant women aged 18...

Doctors across the United States are sounding a serious alarm about ketamine safety risks. A drug once reserved for hospital operating theatres is now landing on doorsteps via post, often after nothing more than a brief online questionnaire. The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) updated its guidance this month, pressing policymakers to act before the consequences grow worse. A Booming...

For many women navigating perimenopause, a glass of wine at the end of a long day can feel like a well-earned ritual. It takes the edge off the stress, softens the anxiety, and sometimes feels like the only thing that actually helps with sleep. But growing evidence suggests that alcohol and perimenopause are a far more complicated pairing than most...

Scotland has launched a major new fund to drive down drug and alcohol deaths. First Minister John Swinney unveiled the £36.9 million Alcohol and Drugs Fund alongside a pledge for a fresh collective approach. He called it essential in addressing one of Scotland’s most enduring public health crises. The fund runs over three years. It supports frontline services and community...

Synthetic opioids are changing overdose statistics worldwide. Cannabis legalisation has shifted public views on risk, even as potency keeps climbing. Vaping has introduced a new generation to nicotine dependence, often through products that look harmless. Amid these shifts, we keep losing sight of one principle: drug use is not inevitable. It is a preventable behaviour we can address at the...

Calls to poison centres about GLP-1 overdoses have climbed dramatically over the past few years. Health experts say the trend shows no sign of slowing down. In 2021, poison centres fielded around 100 calls a month linked to these medications. By 2025, however, that number had grown to roughly 1,000 calls every month. These figures reflect a sharp and worrying...

For most people, the downside of a heavy night out is obvious. A pounding head and a racing pulse the next morning flag a problem early. What is harder to spot is how much harm builds up quietly over years, long after the hangover fades, and whether reversing alcohol damage is even possible once that harm has set in. A...

A major new review has confirmed 62 alcohol related diseases. The number marks a sharp rise in scientific understanding of how drinking damages health. Researchers built the findings on decades of evidence and the World Health Organization’s newest disease classification system. The review appears in the journal Addiction, one of the field’s most respected publications. The Scale of Alcohol Related...

Fentanyl has become the most dangerous drug of the modern overdose era. The synthetic opioid is up to 50 times stronger than heroin. It can kill in a dose smaller than a few grains of sand. For people aged 18 to 44 in the United States, fentanyl overdose is now the leading cause of death. Against this backdrop, researchers have...

Australia ran the most successful anti-smoking campaign the world had ever seen. Not one of the most successful, the most successful. We reduced daily tobacco consumption from around 52 per cent of all Australians aged 16 and over in the late 1940s down to around 13 per cent just a few years ago. That is not a small achievement. That...

The Scale of a Growing Crisis Liver cancer prevention has never been more urgent. More than 6,000 people in the UK die from liver cancer every year, making it one of the fastest rising causes of cancer-related death in the country. Globally, it claims the third spot among all cancer killers. Strikingly, experts estimate that at least 60% of primary...

Britain’s green spaces were once a sanctuary. Weekend mornings brought dog walkers, children on swings, and elderly residents with their newspapers. That picture is quietly changing across urban England, and for many families, the culprit is the creeping normalisation of cannabis use in public parks. The issue has moved from whispered frustration to open political debate. Jeremy Maddocks, a newly...

New research is raising serious concerns about an ingredient many vapers barely give a second thought: the cooling agents responsible for that familiar icy sensation in popular “ice” flavour e-cigarettes. Scientists are now finding that vape cooling agents may do far more than trick the mouth into feeling a chill. They could be putting real strain on the heart and...

A new CDC report reveals that prenatal alcohol use affects 15.2% of pregnant women aged 18 to 49 in the United States. Researchers published the findings on 11 June, drawing on data collected between 2021 and 2024. They found that one in seven pregnant women reported drinking alcohol in the past 30 days. The study used responses from the Behavioral...

For a product sold alongside energy drinks at petrol station counters across America, kratom has secured a remarkably powerful set of allies. An investigation by The New York Times revealed how a well-funded kratom industry influence campaign reached the highest levels of the Trump administration. It raises urgent questions about who is really shaping drug policy in the United States....

New research shows that herbal cigarettes health risks may run even higher than those of conventional tobacco. The findings directly challenge one of the most persistent myths in the wellness and smoking-cessation space. Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) published a study in the Journal of Hazardous Materials. They compared...

Suppressed US Research Warns Even One Drink a Day Carries Measurable Harm An independent journal has published a federally commissioned study on alcohol drinking risks in the United States. The Trump Administration had set it aside when drawing up the country’s latest dietary guidelines earlier this year. Researchers released the full findings on 9 June. The study found that the...

America Is Growing Biologically Older. Cannabis Use and Ageing May Explain Why. For decades, the public conversation around cannabis focused on legal status, tax revenues, and therapeutic promise. Very little attention went to the science. That science now tells a deeply troubling story. Researchers at Harvard Medical School and institutions affiliated with the National Institutes of Health have produced evidence...

New figures from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that drinking during pregnancy rose between 2021 and 2024. The report, published Thursday, raises serious questions about alcohol consumption during pregnancy that clinicians and policymakers have been slow to answer. The CDC found that roughly 15% of adult pregnant women reported current alcohol use in the...

For years, the image of a cannabis user was simple: relaxed, creative, in control. A generation that came of age watching their favourite celebrities light up on social media absorbed a very particular message about weed. Weed was harmless, it was medicine, and above all, it was cool. Now, researchers are urging the public to take a much harder look...

A synthetic drug Spice death has claimed the life of an Exeter father, just days before he was due to enter rehabilitation. Sam Tigwell, aged 33, collapsed on a city street on 29 July 2024 and died in hospital six days later. His mother told an inquest she firmly believed he was ready to change. Lethal Batch Linked to a...

Four in every five older adults who used cannabis in the past year never discussed it with their doctor. That finding, from a new national study in the United States, raises serious questions about whether general practice is keeping pace with a fast-growing pattern of substance use among people aged 65 and over. Clinical cannabis screening in this age group...

The World Health Organisation has issued a stark warning to governments worldwide. Nicotine pouches and children are at the centre of a growing public health crisis, the WHO says. Tobacco companies are deliberately targeting young people with sweet flavours, social media influencers and aggressive advertising. The goal, the organisation argues, is to hook a new generation on nicotine before stronger...

A new study may have found the primary route through which alcohol use disorder in families passes from one generation to the next. Researchers point to a specific brain region involved in how people process reward. The findings could change how we approach prevention for young adults at risk. The research was published in Alcohol, Clinical and Experimental Research in...

Two new studies published in 2026 point to the same uncomfortable conclusion. Cannabis surgical risk is real, it is measurable, and the health system is not doing enough to address it. One study links cannabis use to significantly higher rates of complications after lower extremity fracture surgery. The other finds that most older adults who use cannabis are never screened...

A landmark audit of more than 530 alcohol products sold across the UK has found that consumers are ten times more likely to encounter industry-funded responsible drinking messages than any genuine health warning on the products they buy. The findings, published in June 2026 by Alcohol Focus Scotland and the Alcohol Health Alliance, represent the most comprehensive examination of alcohol...