Kastalia Medrano

    Kastalia is Filter‘s deputy editor. She previously worked at half a dozen mainstream digital media outlets and does not recommend the drug war coverage at any of them. For a while she was a syringe program peer worker in NYC, where she did outreach hep C testing and navigated participants through treatment. She also writes with Jon Kirkpatrick.

    Federal Drug Trafficking Data Show Who Gets Prosecuted for Overdose

    Data from the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) show that under 7 percent of ...

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    Kastalia Medrano

    Colorimetric Drug Tests Are Making Mass Incarceration More Miserable

    Colorado legislators have proposed a working group to study the use of colorimetric drug ...

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    Kastalia Medrano

    CDC: Overdose Deaths Now Down 24 Percent, Back to Pre-Pandemic Crisis

    An estimated 86,882 people in the United States died of overdose between October 2023 ...

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    Kastalia Medrano

    White House Reviews Its Drug Control Strategy, Finds It’s Doing a Good Job

    In 2022 the White House Office of National Drug Control Strategy (ONDCP) published its ...

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    Kastalia Medrano

    DOJ Sues CVS, Alleging “Massive Public Harm” From Opioid Dispensing

    The Department of Justice is accusing CVS Pharmacy Inc. of unlawfully filling opioid prescriptions ...

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    Kastalia Medrano

    The “Reemergence” of Carfentanil

    Proponents of the Controlled Substances Act like to characterize fentanyl analogs as more potent and ...

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    Kastalia Medrano

    Why Would the Temporary Class-Wide Fentanyl Bans Ever Expire?

    Six years after the Drug Enforcement Administration issued a two-year temporary order placing fentanyl-related ...

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    Kastalia Medrano

    US Appeals Court Blocks Securus, Pay Tel Bids to Stall Prison Call Rate Caps

    The landmark Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations poised to bring down costs of phone ...

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    Kastalia Medrano

    CBP Rolls Out Mildly Surprising Workforce Naloxone Policy

    Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has implemented its first internal policy covering staff access ...

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    Kastalia Medrano

    FDA Reports Largest-Ever Seizure of Unregulated Nicotine Vapes

    On October 22, the Food and Drug Administration announced what appears to be the ...

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    Kastalia Medrano