The future offers an opportunity to craft a more unified response that moves the needle on one of the country’s most enduring public health crises. Addiction also demands a shift in public attitude – seeing substance use disorders less as moral failings and more as treatable health conditions. Greater empathy, combined with evidence-based policy, can dismantle stigma, boost treatment-seeking behavior, and lower relapse rates. Substance abuse data serve as an essential barometer for public health interventions and policy decisions. In the broader landscape, we see stark differences by region, age, socioeconomic status, and more. Understanding these trends is critical for guiding prevention efforts, expanding treatment access, and improving long-term recovery outcomes.

Alcohol Abuse Statistics

Reassessing and adjusting parity rules to reflect evidence-based standards of care would also make it easier for providers and programs to accept Medicaid and Medicare, widening access to core recovery support systems. The United States imposes stringent regulations on both gold-standard MOUD options—methadone and buprenorphine—which impacts access. Federal law prohibits clinicians from prescribing it for OUD outside of certified OTPs (also known as methadone clinics), where it must be dispensed or administered on site. Additionally, OTPs are restricted by federal and state regulations that make them difficult to open and operate and that make patient access logistically difficult and even dehumanizing.

South Dakota Alcohol Abuse Statistics

The specter of “rising crime” persists as a central issue among elected officials, political candidates, and in media commentary, and both immigration and popular criminal legal system reforms have been predictably blamed. These explanations and falsehoods about recent crime trends don’t add up, but lies about hard-fought reforms have serious consequences nonetheless. In 2021, (the most recent year for which data are available), the rate of visits to the emergency departments for nonfatal self-harm injuries was approximately 148.2 per 100,000 people. When it comes to suicide and suicide attempts there are rate differences depending on demographic characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity and race. Some of the fish is wild caught, some is farm raised, much of the fresh fish is previously frozen, and some actually comes in fresh. Let’s take a look at what countries Costco gets its fish from and how much it costs based on the prices in Oregon this month.

The overcriminalization of drug use, the use of private prisons, and low-paid or unpaid prison labor are among the most contentious issues in the criminal legal system today because they inspire moral outrage. But they do not answer the question of why most people are incarcerated or how we can dramatically — and safely — reduce our use of confinement. Likewise, emotional responses to sexual and violent offenses often derail important conversations about the social, economic, and moral costs of incarceration and lifelong punishment. False notions of what a “violent crime” conviction means about an individual’s dangerousness continue to be used in an attempt to justify long sentences — even though incarceration does not deter crime and more incarceration is not what victims want. Focusing on the policy changes that can end mass incarceration, and not just put a dent in it, requires the public to put these issues into perspective.

Teenagers in Missouri are 11.14% more likely to have used drugs in the last month than the average American teen. Teenagers in Mississippi are 8.48% less likely to have used drugs in the last month than the average American teen. Teenagers in Minnesota are equally as likely to have used drugs in the last month as the average American teen. Teenagers in Michigan are 5.27% more likely to have used drugs in the last month than the average American teen. Teenagers in Massachusetts are 25.26% more likely to have used drugs in the last month than the average American teen.

• After successful resuscitation following the administration of naloxone, the level of consciousness and breathing of the affected person should be closely observed until full recovery has been achieved.
• Teenagers in Colorado are 18.78% more likely to have used drugs in the last month than the average American teen.
• This national report explains how prison disciplinary policies manufacture misconduct and severly punish incarcerated people.
• Alcohol abuse statistics indicate some inequalities may be due to social conditioning.
• The role of the social worker may include providing in-home therapy supporting parents in being more effective with parental supervision, providing structure, and facilitating healthy caring communication.

RESOURCES

• Fourteen (14) drugs are classified as Schedule V. One example of a Schedule V drugs are cough medicines with 100 to 200 ml of codeine per dose.
• But almost half (47%) of people in prison and jail are there for offenses classified as “violent,” so these carveouts end up gutting the impact of otherwise well-crafted policies.
• Their regular non-medical use, prolonged use, misuse and use without medical supervision can lead to opioid dependence and other health problems.
• We’re also supporting research on ways to deliver effective treatment across different settings and populations.
• When officers arrived at the scene shortly after receiving the call, the dog had already been brought inside.

This includes developing approaches to prevention and intervention that meet the specific needs of children, teens, and young adults. As children transition into adulthood they are still strongly affected by their parents as their parents are by them. One of the factors that can perpetuate SUDs is the enabling that family members frequently engage in. Enabling is a form of accommodation that protects the individual with the SUD from fully experiencing the consequences of his or her substance use. An example of enabling is when the parents of a 25-year-old man repeatedly bail him out of jail and pay for lawyer and court fees generated as a result of drug-related arrests. The parents are attempting to help their son and maintain homeostasis in the system by preventing him from going to jail, however the secondary effect is that the son experiences no consequence to his use.

Adolescent Drug Abuse & Mental Health

In a family with a parent who has a SUD, boundaries around the parental and child subsystems are typically permeable as the parental subsystem does not function well as a cohesive unit. Boundaries around the family itself are rigid to maintain the family secret of substance abuse. The Trump administration has stated that it intends to improve Americans’ health and stop drug deaths while saving taxpayers money. To accomplish this, it is imperative that federal support for SUD treatment get smarter, not smaller. We describe the core substance use disorder elements of effective, evidence-based SUD treatment and examine how current federal policy shapes access to those services. With this understanding, we offer targeted policy recommendations to improve access to optimal SUD treatment and strengthen the foundation for more effective and expanded pathways to recovery.

U.S. prisons and jails incarcerate a disproportionate amount of people who have a current or past mental health problem, and facilities are not meeting the demand for treatment. Police are also often used to respond to mental health crises, despite their involvement frequently resulting in violence or incarceration. The research below expands on mental health policies, practices, and inequities affecting justice-involved people. You can also see a selection of our other research on health in prisons on our Health page. Data consistently shows that mental health and substance use are closely linked — especially during adolescence, a critical period for emotional development and risk-taking behaviors. According to the SAMHSA, teens ages 12 to 17 who had a major depressive episode in the past year were more likely to use substances than those who didn’t.

SUD affects millions of Americans every year, yet most people who need treatment do not receive it. Although individual circumstances and choices influence treatment initiation and engagement, a substantial share of the treatment gap stems from policy barriers that can be removed or redesigned. In addition to federal funds, many states have access to and distribute opioid settlement dollars. These funds—totaling more than $55 billion—must primarily be used for opioid-related spending. However, states have wide latitude in deciding what constitutes opioid-related spending. Despite expert recommendations against it, some states spend the funds on law enforcement or other tangential programs, which means that SUD treatment programs may not be prioritized.

The physical and psychological effects of incarceration, including the PTSD-like Post-Incarceration Syndrome, make it harder to maintain employment and housing, trapping people in cycles of incarceration. Put simply, when people are released from prison, their health and wellbeing are intertwined with that of the community, so the harms visited upon them inside impact everyone. How much of mass incarceration is a result of the war on drugs, or the profit motives of private prisons? The various government agencies involved in the criminal legal system collect a lot of data, but very little is designed to help policymakers or the public understand what’s going on. The uncertainty that results muddies the waters around our society’s use of incarceration, giving lawmakers and lobbyists the opportunity to advance harmful policies that do not make us safe. As criminal legal system reforms become increasingly central to political debate — and are even scapegoated to resurrect old, ineffective “tough on crime” policies — it’s more important than ever that we get the facts straight and understand the big picture.