Farewell post from Zach

An update from Zach, and what comes next

Dear Readers,

It’s been a while since you’ve heard from me in this newsletter. I profusely apologize for the radio silence! (I owe a lot of people texts and emails.) I’m going to briefly catch you all up on what I’ve been up to and what my future plans are. 

First, this fall, I got married! We were able to take some much needed time off of work and settle into married life. Obligatory wedding photo:

In the midst of all of that, a yearlong reporting and research fellowship is rapidly coming to an end. (The fellowship is one of the big reasons why I have not been newsletter-ing lately, but that is about to change). I’ve also undertaken, and am currently in the midst of, an in-depth project that entails coding about 1,000 news articles about the so-called “fentanyl exposure” phenomenon. (the results of this are pretty staggering). 

All of this is to say, I feel really excited about the future and the things I’m working on. 

Which brings me to this rare and privileged place. Thanks to the stability of fellowships and grant funding, as well as a massive thanks to all you readers, I have had the space to think long and hard about the projects I want to take on, and the type of writing I want to pursue. Over these past few months, I realized that my style and interests have drifted away from the Substance newsletter. I will no longer be contributing. But, I love having an outlet to freely express myself, to chase down whatever thoughts I have and dig into weird, messy stuff. I don’t want to completely lose that outlet, so I decided that I will create my own: 

I know it’s getting a bit ridiculous, needing to subscribe to every single writer and their personal newsletter!

What I will say is that I cannot really deal with today’s rapid-fire take-machine, overwhelmingly written in snark and outrage. Instead I will publish my own newsletter a couple times a month. A thoughtful and selective process. I will never flood your inbox with reactionary yells over who said this or who did that. Whatever I publish at Zach Siegel’s Substack™ will be no flab, tight, well-researched, and thoughtfully crafted.

Of course, I’ll keep focusing on the raging debates and discourse in drug policy, addiction medicine, and the recovery and harm reduction movements. I’ll try to write as clear and concise as possible about mysterious and complicated things.

My newsletter will also be a place where I drop all of my published work, especially articles that appear in print (something I’m pursuing much more of these days as the Internet feels more, I dunno, bizarre and broken; you notice how websites, like, barely work anymore?). I’ll also let you in on the stuff I’ve been watching, reading, and thinking about.  

In case you’ve missed them, here’s a couple of recent articles that ran in print:

The New Scientist: Legalising marijuana hasn't been the quick fix the US hoped for (I wrote about some of the fledgling and stalled efforts to create fair and equitable marijuana markets) 

The Washington Post: Decades after the crack epidemic, we’re still reckoning with our mistakes (I reviewed Donovan Ramsey’s amazing new book “When Crack was King”)

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That just about does it. Thanks to all of you who’ve followed my work over these years. If you want to keep on following and reading me, you know where to find me. 

Zach