Director's Perspective

NIDA's Continued Commitment to Nicotine Research

Tobacco use is the Nation's most profound public health problem. Each year, tobacco use accounts for an estimated $50 billion in health care costs, and the human cost is even more staggering. More than 400,000 Americans die annually from tobacco-related diseases. Of course, most smokers want to reduce their risks of heart and lung diseases, cancers, and strokes, but once addicted, smokers and other tobacco users find it very difficult to stop. NIDA's contribution to the Nation's efforts to reduce tobacco use has been critically important. NIDA-supported research has led the way to development

NIDA's Brain, Behavior, Health Initiative: Multidisciplinary Exploration of the Brain

NIDA's mandate in drug abuse science is guided by a fundamental principle: our recognition that addiction is a brain disease. We know that to develop more effective prevention and treatment strategies we must deepen our understanding of how drugs affect the complex inner workings of the brain. Thanks to remarkable advances in bioscience, and particularly in the neurosciences over the past decade, this is a realistic goal. The challenge is to create from the avalanche of new data a coherent picture of biological events interacting with environmental factors and eventuating in the dysfunction we

NIDA's Brain Imaging Studies Serve as Powerful Tools to Improve Drug Abuse Treatment

In recent years, powerful new research tools have been developed that are proving invaluable in unraveling the neurobiological complexities that underlie drug abuse and addiction. Prominent among these tools is a variety of rapidly evolving, noninvasive neuroimaging techniques that let us do something that scientists in other ages could only imagine - see images of what is happening inside the brain while humans think, learn, remember, and experience the effects of drugs. Previously, probing the brain required invasive procedures that limited scientific investigations. Now, functional

Confronting the Rise in Abuse of Prescription Drugs

The misuse and abuse of prescription medications is a growing public health concern. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), estimates that in 2003, 6.3 million Americans aged 12 and older abused prescription drugs (that is, took medications not prescribed for them or took medications solely for pleasure or entertainment) in the month preceding the survey. Most abused pain relievers (4.7 million); others abused tranquilizers (1.8 million), stimulants (1.2 million), and sedatives (0.3 million). The

NIDA Seeks New Keys to Preventing Drug Abuse Among Adolescents

Research has shown that some children raised in chaotic or disadvantaged environments make successful transitions to adulthood while others raised in similar circumstances go on to abusing drugs during adolescence. NIDA has been widening the scope of its risk and resilience research to find out why this is so. Much of our research into the origins of drug abuse has focused on the psychological, behavioral, family, and social factors that are associated with drug use in children and adolescents. This research has identified a constellation of risk factors, such as shy, aggressive, and impulsive

NIDA Responds to the Changing Dynamics of the AIDS Epidemic

Drug abuse and the spread of HIV/AIDS, as well as other infectious diseases such as hepatitis and tuberculosis, are inextricably linked public health problems that require many and multifaceted solutions. A majority of new HIV infections in this Nation are related to drug abuse-through sharing of contaminated drug injection paraphernalia, through sexual contact with an injection drug user, or through the transmission of HIV perinatally.(See " CDC Report Highlights Link Between Drug Abuse and Spread of HIV,"). NIDA has expanded its research efforts in this area to meet this challenge. The

NIDA Responds to Changing Drug Abuse Patterns

Two new NIDA initiatives address the accelerating increase in abuse of opioid pain medications and bring a powerful new transdisciplinary conceptual framework called social neuroscience to bear on the broad questions of abuse and addiction. Together, the initiatives exemplify the depth of NIDA-supported research capabilities and the flexibility that makes it possible to respond quickly to new patterns in drug abuse and to incorporate innovative research approaches. Abuse of Opioid Pain Medications Opioid analgesics, medicine's most effective tools for relieving severe and chronic pain, are

NIDA Research Provides Data to Document and Improve the Effectiveness of Drug Abuse Health Services

As part of its mission to treat and prevent drug abuse and addiction, NIDA has supported the development of numerous research-based drug abuse treatment protocols and drug abuse prevention models. In keeping with standard scientific methodology, these programs have been tested in tightly controlled practice settings with carefully selected populations. Once these programs are tested the critical question becomes: Will the promising treatment outcomes produced in a controlled research environment hold in widely varying real-life treatment settings and for a wide range of patients? Likewise

NIDA Research Advances Global Efforts to Prevent and Treat AIDS

In the 20 years since AIDS was first identified, the disease has killed 25 million people. From the beginning of the epidemic, drug abuse has played an important role in transmitting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Injection drug use has accounted for approximately 35 percent of the 774,467 AIDS cases reported in the United States through 2000 and is now the predominant mode of HIV transmission in many areas of the world. Injecting drug users (IDUs) can acquire and transmit HIV when they share syringes and other paraphernalia for preparing and injecting drugs. Injecting and non-injecting drug

NIDA Probes the Elusive Link Between Child Abuse and Later Drug Abuse

Substantial evidence points to childhood victimization as a major risk factor for later drug abuse. At least two-thirds of patients in drug abuse treatment centers say they were physically or sexually abused as children. However, we know relatively little about the details of that apparent link between child abuse and later drug use. NIDA-supported researchers are working intensively on this critically important public health question. Determining the exact relationship between child abuse and drug abuse is exceedingly difficult given the role that variables such as poverty, family dysfunction

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