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.

    CBP Launches Operation Plaza Spike, “Next Phase” in War on Fentanyl

    Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has begun the latest iteration of its synthetic drug ...

    CDC: Overdose Deaths Leveled Off in 2022, Still Setting New Record

    The United States recorded 107,941 drug overdose deaths in 2022, according to final data ...

    Oregon Lawmakers Recriminalize Drugs, Under the Guise of Treatment

    On March 1, Oregon legislators approved a bill to recriminalize drug possession, undoing the ...

    Many Drug Users Aren’t Protected by “Good Samaritan” Laws

    Kansas, one of the last two states without a “Good Samaritan” law for drug ...

    Nalmefene Is Not “Just Like Naloxone”

    Opvee, an opioid-overdose antidote manufactured by Indivior that was approved in 2023, has in ...

    You Can Definitely Misuse Naloxone, If You’re a Cop

    Cops seem to have decided that ever since fentanyl came into the illicit drug ...

    WA Advances Fentanyl-Detecting K-9s—and Police Immunity From Damages

    Washington State has advanced a bill to train drug-sniffing dogs to detect fentanyl—and limit ...

    White House Issues Very Soft Call for Prisoner Access to OUD Meds

    The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) released its first press ...

    The DEA Made a “Fentanyl Facts” Quiz. Let’s See How They Did.

    One of the weirder things to come out of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) ...