Media + Culture

“The Waterboarding of Drugs!”—Hasan Minhaj Blasts “Rigged” Marijuana Industry

If the marijuana industry is consolidating among large corporations, while Black and Brown people continue to be shut out and…

May 27, 2020

“The Great” Offers a Window Into a Non-Temperance Way of Being

Netflix is currently screening The Great, a 10-part series portraying the improbable, nay astounding, story of Catherine II, Empress of…

May 26, 2020

Anti-Vaping Zealots Find Opportunity in the Pandemic

“We have to seize this moment,” said Laurie Rubiner, executive vice president of the Bloomberg-funded Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. She…

April 30, 2020

The Real Harms of Abusive, Stigmatizing Language in Addiction Treatment

Ironically, the conversation that spurred a peer-support specialist at a buprenorphine program to yell me out of the room was…

March 11, 2020

Tightrope: A Powerful But Problematic Deaths-of-Despair Narrative

Through the 1970s, Nicholas Kristof rode the Number 6 bus to school with Donna King, the Knapp’s five children, and…

March 4, 2020

Do Anti-Vaping Ads and Media Actually Encourage Youth Vaping?

In the wake of last year’s EVALI lung injury outbreak and a raft of legislative and media reactions to perceived…

February 26, 2020

The Latest Dehumanizing, Anti-Harm Reduction Media Portrayal of Skid Row

On February 18, the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid New York Post republished a new article from failed Seattle City Council candidate…

February 24, 2020

Dismantling NY Mag’s Disgraceful Hit-Job on Vaping

New York Magazine ran an article this month—in its “Intelligencer” vertical, of all places—with the provocative title: “Who Thought Sucking…

February 13, 2020

Why Did LSD Help Me With My Philosophy Degree?

It’s summer in the 1990s. I’m looking down from a hill in Richmond Park, London and from the pinnacle of…

January 30, 2020

Radical Theater Performance Subverts Rikers Violence

Christmas was a week away. The sky was baby blue, but you wouldn’t have known that inside the windowless room…

January 15, 2020