Dane Schiller with @HoustonChron reports that a local trucking company's vehicle "was used and damaged in a drug sting against one of Mexico’s most violent cartels without his permission and that [the owner's] family lived in extreme fear they would face retaliation from the cartel, even though they had no idea what the government was doing."

Read the rest here.

A new report published by the New England Journal of Medicine reveals that an increasing number of infants suffering with neonatal abstinence syndrome are being admitted to neonatal intensive care units in the US.

According to the study's authors, neonatal abstinence syndrome is "a drug-withdrawal syndrome that most commonly occurs after in utero exposure to opioids."

The researchers found that:

The New York Times has recently published editorials calling for an end to cannabis prohibition and for the legalization of marijuana. The Sunday, July 27th, 2014 editorial titled "Repeal Prohibition, Again" was part of a series titled "High Time: An Editorial Series on Marijuana Legalization." The first of the editorials and links to the rest of the series can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/27/opinion/sunday/high-time-….

The nation's top public health officials have joined in a call for expanded availability of medication-assisted treatment (i.e. methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone) to address the illegal use of heroin and prescription opiates.

In a commentary published in the New England Journal of Medicine on April 23, 2014 ("Medication-Assisted Therapies — Tackling the Opioid-Overdose Epidemic"), Nora D. Volkow, M.D., of NIDA; Thomas R. Frieden, M.D., M.P.H., of the CDC; Pamela S. Hyde, J.D., SAMHSA; and Stephen S. Cha, M.D., Center for Medicaide and CHIP Services, write:

This week: Part 1 of our coverage of the 57th Session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting in Vienna, Austria. We hear from Mike Trace of the International Drug Policy Consortium; UN Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson; Guatemalan Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Carlos Raul Morales Moscoco; and Diego Canepa, Vice Secretary of the Office of the President of Uruguay.

Download, listen, and subscribe from http://www.podcastgarden.com/episode/drug-policy-facts-19_13675.