Justin Berk

Opinion | How to Cut the Prison Population, Save Money and Make Us Safer Prisoners are aging and getting more expensive to house, diverting funds from much better uses.

In Opinion | “Older people are much less likely to commit crime than the young. They are also much more expensive to lock up,” writes German Lopez, who argues that aging prisoners who are no longer a threat should be released instead of turning U.S. prisons into expensive retirement homes.

Remember that when politicians come to your IOAD event that most of the drug policy approaches that have been done in the name of "ending" overdose have just made the problem worse. 1. Drug seizures - claimed to lower drug use, but we know the opposite is true. 2. Criminalization and incarceration - often framed as "saving people" by locking them up, but this only lowers tolerance and increases overdose risk at reentry. Add to that the barriers of a criminal record-family separation, housing, employment, healthcare-and you set people up for more chaotic use. 3. Coerced, forced, or involuntary treatment - for the same reasons. In the name of "saving people," we statistically increase their risk of overdose.

4. Reducing opioid prescribing - removing regulated opioids created a vacuum filled by fentanyl. This has killed hundreds of thousands and harmed pain patients who are now pushed to the illicit market or toward suicide. 5. Abstinence-based treatment and recovery - people in treatment are still rarely taught about overdose prevention or the risk of returning to use. Talking about it is seen as "triggering" or "enabling." The result: so many die within weeks or months of discharge. So what are solutions that could reduce overdose? Harm reductionists have been screaming these ideas from the rooftops for decades. Providing a regulated supply (not just for people with OUD, as is often the pitch of safe supply efforts). Ending criminalization. Opening overdose prevention centers. Getting police out of pain management decisions between a doctor and patient. Removing barriers to medication access, methadone in particular. Improving mental health care. Building a more kind and just society, one that makes it safe for people to use drugs around one another so that overdose can be spotted and reversed. Anyway... lots to think about. I miss my friends. Let's do better.

When politicians show up at your #ioad event… remind them that almost every policy approach to overdose has made it worse and that’s by design.

The WHO now recommends injectable lenacapavir twice yearly for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).

This is a big step toward expanding HIV prevention options globally, particularly among those who face challenges with daily adherence to other forms of PrEP, stigma, or access to health care.

NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery | In Depth Structural Racism and Firearm Injury: Operationalizing Health Equity in Trauma Care A visual representation of University of Chicago Medicine's community-focused holistic approaches to care delivery in Chicago's South Side.

New from NEJM Catalyst: Since reopening its level 1 trauma center in 2018, leaders at University of Chicago Medicine have developed community-focused holistic approaches to care delivery through the Violence Recovery Program and the bedside Recovery Legal Care initiative. nej.md/44kTKKC

DOGE loses control over government grants website, freeing up billions The DOGE team’s loss of control is the latest sign of its declining influence following Elon Musk’s departure from Washington.

Earlier, several NIH staffers told me that NIH awards that had been held are being issued now. Bunches of them.

Wonder if this report from the WaPo (gift link) has to do with it.

It's OK Not To Know Things I’ll be the first to admit that I had never heard of Juneteenth until I taught summer school as a young educator.

“Here’s one of my takeaways…It’s OK not to know things. There’s no harm in saying, “I haven’t heard of that, tell me more.” That’s very different from willful ignorance. So your family did not grow up commemorating Juneteenth this article is for you.”

open.substack.com/pub/sharonmc...

“Why Are We Funding This?” Long-standing myths about “silly science” have contributed to the reckless slashing of government-supported research.

If someone had said, “Who cares how desert lizard venom works? Let’s not fund that research,” we never would have discovered semaglutide, a key component of drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic, which have helped millions of Americans lose weight.

NIH staff and biomedical community sound alarm about agency politicization, funding slowdown In test of NIH director’s support of dissent, NIH staff sign Bethesda Declaration urging reversal of grant cuts and freezes

Breaking news: Staff at the National Institutes of Health have issued a declaration calling on their director to depoliticize the agency and reverse spending cuts.

A quote from Sarah Stillman that reads, “What I found . . . is hard to describe as anything other than a pattern of widespread torture of people with mental-health issues in county jails.”

In a new report, Sarah Stillman investigates deaths related to starvation, dehydration, and neglect in county jails across the U.S.—a crisis that at times has been covered up by private health companies and government officials.
nyer.cm/hMT7u9R

HHS plans to cut the national suicide hotline’s program for LGBTQ youth In February, the program received an average of 2,100 contacts per day.

They received an average of 2100 calls a day...

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Remarks from RFK Jr. in a press conference, talking about Autistic kids. “These are kids who will never pay taxes,” Kennedy declared. “They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. We have to recognize we are doing this to our children.”

I don't think I've ever seen someone speak about children (in this case, specifically Autistic kids) with such disgust and such disdain.

Headline: ICE came for their neighbor so these Tennesseans formed a human chain to protect him

I can't emphasize enough that the most important thing journalists can do right now is publish exactly this kind of article

Circle up

One of the saddest fuckin things about RFK’s crusade is his framing of autism as something inarguably worse than being sickened or even dying from infections.

No, none of his mouth diarrhea is accurate. But what’s also terrible is him training the country to think SO LITTLE of autistic people.

The Pernicious Myth of Fentanyl-Laced Cannabis Despite periodic media outcry, there's no evidence that this happens. Even if it did, the practicalities of ingestion would limit any danger.

Just wrapped an amazing panel with @drugpolicy.org! There were a couple of questions about fentanyl in cannabis that we didn’t have time to get to, and I hope this reply reaches them -

1. Have things changed since I initially wrote about this in 2021?

Yes and no. 1/

filtermag.org/fentanyl-mar...

60 Minutes found no criminal record for 75% of the Venezuelan migrants the U.S. sent to a mega-prison in El Salvador. https://cbsn.ws/4lC4Vp5

My biggest frustration in terms of rising to this moment is: people obviously do not understand that there's a whole psyop strategy around DEMORALIZATION.

I do not necessarily think that every doomcryer is insincere, but to steal hope is still to hand our enemies weapons.

YouTube video by Health Policy and Management - JHSPH Developing a Better System of Care for Nonfatal Overdose | CMAP Nexus Series

Full video of the panel on non-fatal overdose at @johnshopkinssph.bsky.social that I participated in last week. Definitely happy with how it went!

youtu.be/D8jSyTdf8qg

Today I lost an NIH grant training clinicians to do research about intimate partner violence with perinatal women.

More women are murdered in the perinatal period than die of obstetric complications.

I didn't just lose a grant. We lost an entire cohort of people building careers to prevent that.

Inside Rhode Island’s Pioneering Overdose Prevention Center Filter sits down for an extensive interview with the co-director of the nation's first state-sanctioned OPC, which just began operations.

Amazing interview from @filtermag.bsky.social about the OPC in RI: filtermag.org/rhode-island...

People wearing masks

This article summarises the current evidence around the protection provided by masks and respirators in healthcare and community settings, and how this evidence aligns with current policy
www.bmj.com/content/388/...