Filter

Somewhere between Sam Quinones columns and demolitions of lower-cost housing units, methamphetamine took on the public image of something actually evil. Almost in a supernatural way.

Despite the uptake of narrative about meth overdose crisis, on some level the publ...

Public attention to violence against women tends to surge in response to major events and movements, then recede just as quickly. Official recognition of women who use substances as a key population, however, is relatively new. In late 2024, the United Nations released a report on behalf of the Women and Harm Reduction International Network (WHRIN), highlighting this longstan...

Filter is shutting down this week. We were unable to survive an increasingly difficult funding landscape, like too many other harm reduction and independent media organizations in these times. It’s a sad moment for those of us who have cared about the publication. But I don’t think we need to be despondent.

A few of us got together to conceive Filter in 2...

Around 2013, fentanyl started percolating in the United States street opioid supply, which was heroin-based at that time. Over the next few years it steadily pushed heroin out of the East Coast, and once the COVID-19 pandemic hit it rapidly did the same

In my worst moments, reporting on the tobacco harm reduction space, as I’ve been doing for the past four years, can feel hopeless. Eight million people continue to die of diseases related to combustible tobacco use each year. Yet all over the world, the smoking-cessation tools most capable of transforming this situation are