Can you believe that we only have a few more days left of 2016? I can’t.

2016 has been quite a year. No matter where you stand politically, you’d probably agree that this year’s presidential election was a wild ride, to say the least.

2016 also had many stories relating to drugs. The first, unfortunately, is a story that’s all too familiar: the drug overdose of a celebrity. In this case, the celebrity was singer, songwriter, and musician Prince and the drug was fentanyl.

While Prince was rich and famous, he shared the same story and the same addiction as several others: a person takes a powerful opioid prescription for pain and suffers complications because of this powerful medication.

Prescription opioids are so powerful that government funding and regulations are trying to help people with their opioid addictions and trying to prevent such addictions in the first place. Some states have even sued drug manufacturers, stating that the companies didn’t warn people just how addictive their medications can be.

Speaking of medical help and drugs, medical marijuana was still an issue in 2016. More states legalized medical marijuana or loosened their restrictions on the use of marijuana for such purposes. Using marijuana for medical purposes is legal in several states, although there are still debates about certain provisions of the law.

Voters in other states even approved the legal use of marijuana for recreational purposes, to use in ways similar to how adults can use alcoholic beverages. In these states, like other states where marijuana is legal, people over the age of twenty-one will be able to use and grow controlled amounts of marijuana. Not surprisingly, there’s ongoing debate about recreational marijuana as well.

2016, then, featured some new developments relating to drugs and some old ones. It seems that we’re still debating how drugs should be used and looking for ways to help people who use them incorrectly. One wonders what 2017 will bring.