On April 22, 2026, “in an elegant room at historic Union Station, just a few blocks from the Capitol,” Scientific American Custom Media and West Virginia University’s Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute together produced Hope on the Horizon: The Science and Communities Redefining Addiction Care.

The advance promotions promised speakers including “members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, regulators and policymakers, leading technologists and neuroscientists, philanthropists, and patients in recovery.” The actual roster of panelists was posted after the event by Scientific American and included a Who’s Who of addiction treatment policymakers.

Attendees heard 30-minute panel presentations on the following topics:

• ​The Patient at the Center of Care
• ​Moving Toward a Better Health System for Addiction Care
• ​The Innovations Moving Us Forward in Addiction Care

Scientific American has just published a summary of the April conference under the headline, “An emerging road map to better addiction care.” The summary states:

More than a dozen speakers explored paths to a better addiction-care system, one that incorporates both rigorous, data-driven research and compassionate, accessible care… [M]eaningful progress against addiction will require a broad coalition of patients and advocates, clinicians and scientists, and policy makers willing to reshape the nation’s approach to treatment and recovery.

I’m sorry, but this propaganda is insulting. The current administration has gutted data-driven research and has recommended replacing “compassionate, accessible care” with incarceration and involuntary treatment. Furthermore, we already have a “road map to better addiction care.” The current administration refuses to follow it.

For example, the SciAm Custom Media event spent significant effort hammering home the “addiction is a brain disease” model. Most of the research funded by this model goes to finding out how drugs affect the brain and how to engineer drugs to block or reverse those effects.

Where is the funding for research on the stress-based model of addiction, which says that acute or chronic stress is the wellspring of addiction? How about more research on what stress does to the brain and how to prevent those effects with stress management?

The thing that unites the majority of people in the U.S. being treated for substance use disorders is not genetics — it’s abuse. It’s right in front of Scientific American, and they don’t even see it. Dr. Stephen Loyd, Director of West Virginia’s Office of Drug Control Policy, told his own addiction story at Hope on the Horizon, which Scientific American says concluded as follows:

Loyd eventually went to detox, finding effective treatment for his addiction and for the physical and sexual abuse he’d suffered as a child that had heightened his risk.

Hello!?! Where is the research on the “physical and sexual abuse?” Why does it “heighten the risk” for addiction? What does physical and sexual abuse do to the brain’s reward system? Why does chronic stress appear to turn any substance into a potentially addictive substance?

Researchers at the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute have developed one of the best models for treating substance use disorders in the world. They take a whole family approach to treatment using peer recovery support specialists and even wearable technology to “predict the cravings and anxiety that can lead a patient to relapse.”

Much of the federal funding to support this has disappeared. Much of the opioid settlement funds that have filled the gap are about to disappear. We know what works, and it’s expensive. Proper addiction treatment involves aggressive recruitment into treatment right from the emergency room, including temporary housing and rewards for staying clean.

There is enough money to pay for these interventions, and more, if we stop wasting it on programs that are proven not to work. That includes “scare programs” such as D.A.R.E. taught in almost all public schools, and the policy of simply arresting drug addicts, which was the most expensive, least effective method of dealing with the problem back when the government kept statistics on such things.

Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, did mention the elephant in the room at Hope on the Horizon: “We have evidence-based prevention interventions that work, and we’re not applying them.” Bam. There it is. And she gets how stress needs to be a bigger focus: “such as adverse childhood experiences and trauma [which] predispose people” to addiction.

The idea that “children as young as five or six could be taught coping skills for emotional regulation,” as one panelist said, is about five or six years too late. We are waiting for problems to appear and then focusing on repair. Parent-Child Interactive Therapy and other first-year interventions teach stress management skills to new parents, resulting in greater resilience in school years.

Scientific American concludes its coverage of Hope on the Horizon with the statement, “The lives of nearly 50 million Americans depend on a new and better solution.” No. They depend on funding and implementing the solutions we already have.

Written by Steve O’Keefe. First published August 5, 2026.

Sources:

“Hope on the Horizon: The Science and Communities Redefining Addiction Care,” ​An exclusive event co-hosted by Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute and Scientific American Custom Media, April 22, 2026.

“An emerging road map to better addiction care,” Scientific American, July 21, 2026.

Image courtesy of NASA/Johnson.