Popular media misinformation on neonatal abstinence syndrome, 2015-2021.

Background: As the overdose crisis unfolded, narratives mischaracterizing neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) as "addicted babies" with echoes to the "crack babies" panic proliferated in mainstream media. his study examines NAS misinformation dynamics and characteristics over a seven-year period.

Methods: Based on a comprehensive query, Media Cloud was used to compile mainstream media content relating to NAS between 2015 and 2021.

The Other Infodemic: Media Misinformation about Involuntary Commitment for Substance Use.

Background: As drug-related deaths have surged, the number and scope of legal mechanisms authorizing involuntary commitment for substance use have expanded. Media coverage of involuntary commitment routinely ignores documented health and ethical concerns. Prevalence and dynamics of misinformation about involuntary commitment for substance use have not been assessed.

Can touch this: training to correct police officer beliefs about overdose from incidental contact with fentanyl.

Misinformation about overdose risk from accidentally inhaling or touching fentanyl is widespread among police in the United States. This may aggravate already elevated burdens of officer stress and burnout, while chilling lifesaving overdose response. Police education has shown promise in reducing false beliefs about fentanyl.

Fentanyl panic goes viral: The spread of misinformation about overdose risk from casual contact with fentanyl in mainstream and social media.

Background: Fueled by misinformation, fentanyl panic has harmed public health through complicating overdose rescue while rationalizing hyper-punitive criminal laws, wasteful expenditures, and proposals to curtail vital access to pain pharmacotherapy. To assess misinformation about health risk from casual contact with fentanyl, we characterize its diffusion and excess visibility in mainstream and social media.

Methods: We used Media Cloud to compile and characterize mainstream and social media content published between January 2015 and September 2019 on overdose risk from casual fentanyl exposure.

"Pick up anything that moves": a qualitative analysis of a police crackdown against people who use drugs in Tijuana, Mexico.

Background: Homeless people who use drugs (PWUD) are often displaced, detained, and/or forced into drug treatment during police crackdowns. Such operations follow a zero-tolerance approach to law enforcement and have a deleterious impact on the health of PWUD. In Mexico, municipal police officers (MPOs) conducted the largest crackdown documented at the Tijuana River Canal (Tijuana Mejora) to dismantle an open drug market.