News
October 8, 2025
NEW PODCAST: CLEARing the Air: Understanding Washington’s Drug Crisis Response

With the increase in overdose deaths in our state and over the years, what we’re doing in Washington State is recognized as a crisis response. In this new podcast series, ADAI’s Community-Law Enforcement Aligning in Response to Substance Use (CLEARS) Project will be exploring the system currently in place to respond to drug use through…
September 26, 2025
Carfentanil: What Are We Seeing in Washington State?

From the UW Center for Community-Engaged Drug Education, Epidemiology & Research at the Addictions, Drug & Alcohol Institute The DEA recently reported that more than 50,000 fake pharmaceutical pills were seized by law enforcement in Western Washington. The pills were labeled with “M30” and designed to look like oxycodone. In recent years such pills typically…
July 17, 2025
Children Are Safer When Families Are Supported—Not Separated: Seattle Times Op-Ed

ADAI’s Susan Stoner, PhD, director of the WA State Parent-Child Assistance Program (PCAP) and the UW Fetal Alcohol and Drug Unit (FADU), co-authored a July 16, 2025 opinion piece in the Seattle Times with Jim Walsh, MD, Program Director of the Addiction Medicine Fellowship at Swedish. In the piece, Drs. Stoner and Walsh note recent…
January 10, 2025
High Potency Cannabis Leads to ER Visits, Illnesses for Some Users (KUOW with ADAI’s Beatriz Carlini)

This new article from KUOW/NPR describes some of the latest data and research related to serious health impacts from use of high-THC cannabis products and talks to ADAI’s Beatriz Carlini, PhD, MPH, director of our Cannabis Education & Research Program (CERP). The article describes increasing illnesses, ER visits, and deaths related to use of high-THC…
January 8, 2025
Washington Sees Spike in New Chemicals in Street Drugs, Fentanyl (Seattle Times with ADAI’s Caleb Banta-Green)

In this new article from the Seattle Times, ADAI’s Caleb Banta-Green, PhD, MPH, MSW, director of the UW Center for Community-Engaged Drug Education, Epidemiology & Research (CEDEER), says that the drug supply in Washington State is increasingly “messy,” with over 237 unique substances (some drugs, some not) found in 816 samples tested in just 6…
January 6, 2025
ADAI Highlights from 2024

HAPPY NEW YEAR from all of us at ADAI! ADAI had an extremely productive 2024, with tons of incredible work from our centers and teams and the development of a very exciting strategic plan that will help shape our future. As we start looking ahead, we first wanted to take a quick peek back at…
June 17, 2024
Third Space Toolkit: New Resource from ADAI’s CAAHS Supporting Telehealth for Substance Use Disorders

ADAI’s Center for Advancing Addiction Health Services (CAAHS), working with the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, recently developed an interactive online toolkit, the Third Space Toolkit: Building Space for Telehealth in Libraries and the Community, to support the addition of “privacy pods” in Idaho public libraries for the purpose of providing private spaces for…
May 8, 2024
ADAI in the News – Cannabis Edition

ADAI’s Director, Susan Ferguson, PhD, was recently featured in two news pieces about the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s move toward reclassifying cannabis as a less dangerous drug by lowering it from Schedule I to Schedule III. (What do these terms mean?) In an article for the AP that discusses numerous impacts such a change might…
April 17, 2024
ADAI in the News

ADAI’s Caleb Banta-Green, PhD, MPH, MSW, Director of the Center for Community Engaged Drug Epidemiology, Education & Research (CEDEER), was featured in two news articles in the past week: A sliver of hope in a record-setting year of deaths of homeless people. Seattle Times, April 17, 2024. (free link)Fentanyl-related fatal overdoses continue to devastate King County’s…
January 24, 2024
New from CERP: Personal Experiences with High-THC Cannabis

Twenty years ago, most cannabis contained 10% or less THC, and anything higher was considered very potent. Today, cannabis flower (the plant) can be as high as 25% THC, and other cannabis products contain as much as 60-90%. Cannabis concentrates, such as shatter, wax, vaping cartridges, dabs, and butters, made up 35% of the Washington…
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