While many people think marijuana is harmless, some people do become addicted to it. Roughly one million people receive substance abuse treatment for cannabis each year and the majority resume using marijuana following program discharge.

Separate the facts about cannabis use from the myths in an interview with Itai Danovitch, MD, director of Addiction Psychiatry Clinic Services at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Smoking remains a scourge despite almost universal acknowledgement of its harms. This raises a puzzling question: If smoking is so bad for you, why do people continue to smoke?

The FDA approved the use of Zubsolv on July 3. The medication contains buprenorphine and naloxone and is manufactured by Swedish drug maker Orexo AB. It comes in a once-daily tablet that dissolves under the tongue.

The FDA rejected a new medication to treat opioid addiction that would have been implanted under the skin. The implant, Probuphine, is a long-acting version of buprenophine that is implanted under the skin of the upper arm in a procedure that can be done in a physician’s office in about 10–15 minutes.

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The new DSM-5 will change the way clinicians diagnose substance use disorders (SUD) and could have far-reaching consequences for patients seeking treatment and clinicians and organizations offering that treatment.

Addiction has been around seemingly forever. However, how we have conceptualized it, has changed considerably over time.

Learn the motivation and reasoning behind the substance use disorders section of DSM-5 in this interview with chair of the substance use disorders workgroup, Charles P O’Brien, MD, PhD

The ability of primary care and other office-based physicians to prescribe buprenorphine has more than doubled the capacity of the US healthcare system to treat patients addicted to prescription opioids and heroin. One barrier to expanding access to this treatment is that some physicians cite a lack of available counseling services as reason not to offer buprenorphine treatment in their offices.