hallucinogens
More Americans with mental health conditions are using psilocybin
Use of psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound found in numerous mushroom species, has sharply increased since 2019, according to a new study published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The spike is particularly pronounced among Americans with mental health conditions, the study shows. The rate of adults 18-29 reporting psilocybin use in the past year jumped by 44%, according to the study, while adults over 30 showed a 188% increase. Perhaps unsurprisingly, poison control center calls related to psilocybin also skyrocketed among adults, teens, and even children.
"What really surprised us was how quickly these numbers changed and how many people using psilocybin had conditions like depression, anxiety or chronic pain," Karilynn Rockhill, a researcher at the Colorado School of Public Health who co-led the study, said in a press release. "New laws or growing interest in its potential mental health benefits may be prompting people to seek psilocybin as a form of self-treatment."
smoking
Democratic senators push back against cuts to tobacco divisions at FDA, CDC
The staffing cuts roiling HHS have hit people working on tobacco issues particularly hard. A letter signed by 18 Democratic senators on Monday pushes the Trump administration for answers about how it plans to regulate tobacco products and enforce those regulations in light of cuts at the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products, as well as what the gutting of the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health means for the future of tobacco use prevention and cessation.
"Without these critical staff, we are concerned that more youth will start using tobacco products, fewer people will quit, and more people will become ill and die from tobacco-caused disease," the senators write.
Beyond these concerns, the senators' list of questions highlights just how little information lawmakers, not to mention the public, have about what's going on in the federal government. They want to know things like how many people have lost their jobs, whether federal funding will continue for various anti-tobacco initiatives, and what's going to happen to the $712 million in user fees collected from tobacco companies and meant to be used by the CTP. Wouldn't we all! Read more about the upheaval at the FDA and CDC's tobacco divisions, the latter of which a former director called "the greatest gift to the tobacco industry in the last half century." — Sarah Todd
opinion
The case for long-term clinical trials on diet and nutrition
An NIH research program meant to study the association between diet and chronic health is unlikely to yield meaningful conclusions, according to a new First Opinion piece by researchers David Ludwig and Mary Putt. The culprit is the planned duration of the various diets included in the study: just two weeks each.
Ludwig and Putt argue that such a short duration is "simply not enough time to tell us anything meaningful" and leaves the research extremely prone to statistical bias and other confusion. Since there is "no substitute" for longer trials, they argue, the program in question — Nutrition for Precision Health — should channel its funding toward large-scale trials of low-carbohydrate, ultra-processed, and other diets spanning two years.
But as the program currently stands, "these trials are not only inconclusive, but also potentially misleading by making a healthy diet look bad and an unhealthy diet look good," they write. "We must do better."
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