Morgan Godvin.

Researcher · Writer · Harm Reductionist

Turning lived experience into evidence.

From a federal prison cell to the David Geffen School of Medicine. I study the drug supply that nearly killed me — and write about the people the system leaves behind.

Read the writing View research Live CV ↗
2× published in JAMA 13+ peer-reviewed papers 40+ essays & op-eds 200k+ followers across platforms Project Director, Drug Checking Los Angeles Founder, Beats Overdose
Research, words & coverage in JAMAThe Washington Post The New York TimesNPRCNN Al JazeeraThe Marshall ProjectWIRED

About

Scientist and survivor, in equal measure.

Morgan Godvin is a researcher and writer at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, where she is the project director of Drug Checking Los Angeles — a community program that chemically analyzes the illicit drug supply and turns what it finds into peer-reviewed science, public-health guidance, and policy. Her research appears in JAMA, the International Journal of Drug Policy, and Drug and Alcohol Dependence; her reporting in The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, The Marshall Project, and Filter.

After years of opioid addiction and the overdose death of a close friend, she was prosecuted under a federal drug-induced-homicide statute. After struggling with drug use through her first year in jail, she finally found recovery — not because of her incarceration, but despite it. She was then sent to the nearest women's federal prison, 600 miles away in the Bay Area: FCI Dublin, the institution guards would come to call "the Rape Club," ultimately shuttered amid a nationwide scandal and the arrest of its warden, chaplain, and other correctional officers. Within weeks of her release she enrolled at Portland State University; three years later she graduated summa cum laude.

Since then she has helped write and implement drug policy — from Oregon's Measure 110 to a 2025 study visit with the European Union Drugs Agency in Lisbon — and built a research career measuring the realities of the fentanyl era. She founded Beats Overdose to bring naloxone and overdose prevention into nightlife, music, and hip hop scenes. She writes and speaks because the data and the story are two sides of the same coin: drug policy in the US has left a trail of death and destruction in its wake, and it doesn't have to be this way.

Drug policy in the United States is in dire shape, with more Americans dying annually than the sum total of Americans who died during the Vietnam War. Incarceration and its collateral consequences produce lifelong, even intergenerational hardships. She survived the grief of losing her mother to overdose as well as her own overdoses. With boundless dedication and a dose of naiveté, she has dedicated herself to the cause of reducing drug-related deaths, and much of what she does is in service to the cause.

When she is not doing science, writing, researching, and speaking, she can be found traveling the globe and learning from everyone she meets. She'd like to thank her Centennial Middle and High School Spanish teachers for giving her the first glimpse of a world wider than she once knew.

Opioid & Overdose Research

Measuring the fentanyl era.

Peer-reviewed research on the drug supply, overdose, and the policies meant to address them — including two papers in JAMA and book chapters with Columbia and Rutgers University Press.

JAMA

Trends in Drug Overdose Deaths Among US Adolescents, 2010–2021

2022 · LA TimesView PDF·Download
JAMA

UV stabilizer BTMPS in the illicit fentanyl supply, 9 US locations

2024 · NPR, CNN, WIREDView PDF·Download
First author

Estimating the Daily Morphine-Milligram Equivalent of Illicit Fentanyl Use in Los Angeles

Drug & Alcohol Dependence, 2026View PDF·Download·One Pager
Peer-reviewed papers selected
Reviews & book chapters
Full publication list on Google Scholar →    Or see the complete CV ↓

Writing

The personal and the political, where they meet.

More than forty essays and op-eds in The Washington Post, The Marshall Project, Al Jazeera, Vice, JSTOR Daily, Filter, and more.

Washington Post2019My friend and I both took heroin. He overdosed. Why was I charged with his death?Op-edThe federal case that turned private grief into a confession — and a five-year sentence.Read the piece Marshall Project2019Money changed everything for me in prisonEssayWhy my reentry indicts the system rather than vindicating it.Read the piece Marshall Project2020I thought jail would help me get clean. I was dead wrong.EssayDrug court promised treatment and delivered punishment by another name.Read the piece Medium2022Last Month, I Almost Killed MyselfPersonal essayOn the danger of building a career on recovery when you are not, in fact, okay.Read the piece Al Jazeera2021What does patriotism mean to US military veterans?FeatureVeterans on service, sacrifice, and the country they came home to.Read the piece LA Times2021An overdose epidemic is raging alongside the pandemicOp-edAs COVID closed the world, a second epidemic accelerated — and treatment got harder to reach.Read the piece Vice2020When almost all your fellow inmates speak another languageEssayWhat the Mexican women I served time with taught me about dignity inside.Read the piece Human Parts2020Lessons from incarceration: enduring isolationEssayFour years inside taught me how to survive a lockdown. Then the country went into one.Read the piece Oregon Capital Chronicle2023Recriminalizing drugs would be a bad choice for OregonOp-edRolling back Measure 110 won't fix the crisis it's being blamed for.Read the piece Truthout2023Don't blame decriminalization for the housing crisisOp-edThe suffering on the streets is a housing failure, not a decriminalization one.Read the piece Columbia Univ. Press2024Punishment Over Prevention: U.S. Drug PolicyBook chapterIn Excessive Punishment, ed. Lauren-Brooke Eisen.View the chapter Rutgers Univ. Press2026The Ecology of Prisons and the Effect on Mental HealthBook chapterIn Ecologies of Justice: Making and Unmaking Prison Worlds.View the chapter
Browse the full portfolio — 40+ pieces →

Listen & Watch

The story, in her own voice.

Dispatches from the front line of harm reduction — and life after prison. (The full-length audio documentary lives up in About.)

@morgangodvin on TikTok

Harm reduction, drug policy, and life after prison — short, unflinching, and widely shared.

Open TikTok YouTube Instagram
Sunset over the hills and river of Portland, Oregon, with people sitting on the grass
Portland, Oregon. Home — also known as the District of Oregon: the court that sentenced me to 60 months in federal prison and shipped me to FCI Dublin.

Where I Work

Drug Checking Los Angeles

We're a UCLA-based community program that chemically analyzes the illicit drug supply, via FTIR and lab testing, providing a life-saving direct service while generating insights into the shifting drug supply.

Our findings have surfaced in JAMA, NPR, All Things Considered, and CNN — including the first U.S. reports of the industrial chemical BTMPS in fentanyl.

visit drugcheckinglosangeles.com ↗
community-based drug checking and drug supply researchdavid geffen school of medicine at ucla
@drugcheckinglaFollow on Instagram ↗

Before this

Founder & Executive Director, Beats Overdose

2021–2025. In partnership with Rhymesayers Entertainment, we provided overdose-prevention services on tour with Atmosphere all across the country — at a time when venue-based harm reduction was rare. We pushed through countless barriers to partner with dozens of harm-reduction organizations and bring our services to cities all over the country. Many of those relationships carried on, ushering in a new era of acceptability for overdose-prevention services at concerts and nightlife events. Beats Overdose still exists, but is lying low while I build out my research skills.

35 states $2M in supplies distributed 250,000 people reached
Beats Overdose logo beatsoverdose.com ↗

Speaking

From the lecture hall to the state capitol.

Morgan speaks to universities, agencies, clinicians, and movement spaces about drugs, prisons, harm reduction, and the people behind the data.

  • Yale University — SEICHE Center for Health & Justice 2023
    Addiction & the criminal-legal system
  • National Institutes of Health — Criminal-Legal Subgroup 2024
    Decriminalization & recriminalization in Oregon
  • National Academy of Medicine 2022
    Invited lecture
  • European Union Drugs Agency — Lisbon 2025
    Four talks at the Drug-Related Deaths meeting
  • VinUniversity — Hanoi, Vietnam 2025
    Emerging science on drug use & addiction
  • Oregon Legislature — Joint Committee on Addiction & Public Safety 2023
    The state of affairs on substance use
  • Drug Policy Alliance — Reform Conference 2022
    When facts fail · community-driven research
  • National Harm Reduction Coalition — San Juan 2022
    People with lived & living experience as researchers
  • Arizona State University — Drugs & Public Safety Symposium 2023
  • College on Problems of Drug Dependence — New Orleans 2025
  • New York Society of Addiction Medicine — keynote 2021
  • Lisbon Addictions 2024
    Law-enforcement experiences after Measure 110
Invite Morgan to speak →

Press & Media

Selected coverage & appearances.

Morgan's research and story have featured across national press, broadcast, and radio.

All media appearances →

Curriculum Vitae

The full record.

Education, positions, the complete publication list, honors, and every talk — updated May 2026. Read it here or take a copy.

Download CV (PDF) Open in new tab ↗