drug_policy/economist.articles.html
From our drug policy file archives. For educational purposes only, to inform the debate about drug policy. Some of the activities discussed here may be illegal, dangerous, stupid, or more than one of the above. (Please note that web links inside this document may be broken.)
Lair of the infamous tms: Drug Policy, economist.articles
From mimsy!cs.umd.edu!haven.umd.edu!darwin.sura.net!spool.mu.edu!olivea!
hal.com!hal.com!usenet Mon Jul 5 13:33:09 EDT 1993
Howdy All!
Well, I haven't seen this posted yet anywhere, and I assume it's
of interest to everyone. This article is from the May 15th-21st issue of
The Economist, a magazine that I personally feel is usually spot on in
it's analysis of just about anything. It has now further gained my
respect for addressing this issue.
In any case, the front cover has a picture of someone being
injected with something and holding a candle (the only light source,
making the overall effect somewhat murky). The banner print says, "Bring
drugs within the law", which is the title of the following article
reproduced here without permission. Assume that all typos are mine.
-----------------------
In 1883, Benjamin Ward Richardson, a distinguished British doctor,
denounced the evils of drinking tea. He said it caused an "extremely
nervous semi-hysterical condition". In 1936, an article in the American
Journal of Nursing claimed that a marijuana taker "will suddenly turn with
murderous violence upon whomever is nearest to him". Tea and marijuana
have three things in common: they alter the moods of those who take them,
they are regarded as tolerable safe, and they are addictive.
Attitudes to addiction are complicated and often contradictory.
Tea and marijuana are in themselves fairly harmless, yet tea is generally
legal and marijuana is not. Tobacco and cocaine are harmful but, again,
tobacco is almost universally allowed, whereas most readers of The
Economist live in countries which may imprison you for possessing cocaine.
Throw in the joker of addictions which come not in syringes or cigarettes,
but in casinos and computer cartridges, and you have a fine arena for
combat between libertarians and puritans.
This battle, always lively, has just become hotter. On April 28th
Bill Clinton appointed Lee Brown, a former policeman, as America's new
"drug tsar", and thus leader of the worlds toughest prohibition programme
(see page 31 [I'll type that one in after this one --Wonko]). Ten days
before, Italians had voted to move in the other direction by scrapping the
harshest measures of their drug laws.
Such boldness is rare. The attitude of most electorates and
governments is to deplore the problems that the illegal drug trade brings,
view the whole matter with distaste, and sit on the status quo--a policy
of sweeping prohibition. Yet the problems cannot be ignored. The crime
to which some addicts resort to finance their habits, and in which the
suppliers of illegal drugs habitually engage, exacts its price in victims'
lives, not just money. The illegal trade in drugs supports organised
crime the world over. It pulls drug-takers into a world of filthy
needles, poisoned doses and pushers bent upon selling them more addictive
and dangerous fixes.
Yet most people still balk at exploring ways in which a legal
regime might undermine such effects. Their refusal owes something to a
distaste for addiction in itself. This is an argument shot through with
inconsistency. The strongest disapproval often comes from those who
scream about liberties if their own particular indulgences--for assault
rifles, say--are attacked. Addiction to cigarettes is reckoned to be the
chief avoidable cause of death in the world. Alcohol deprives boozers of
their livers and their memories, and ends the lives of all too many
innocents who get smashed on the roads by the inebriated. Yet here the
idea of dissuasion within the law is broadly accepted.
A much sounder basis for doubt is the worry that legalisation
would increase drug-taking, and that rising consumption and addiction
would overwhelm the gains to be had from getting drugs within the law.
Yet legalisation should not be taken to mean a lawless free-for-all, with
no restraint on the supply or use of drugs. Done properly, it would allow
governments to take control of the distribution and quality of these
substances away from the criminals. Quality control is decisive, because
much of the damage done by drugs bought on street corners is caused by
adulterated products; in much the same way, carelessly distilled hooch can
cause blindness.
Supply would be regulated by a system of government licences
analogous to those already in force for tobacco and alcohol (and which
would serve, among other things, to keep drugs out of the hands of
children), backed by strict policing and heavy penalties. The toughness
of the regime would rise with the addictiveness of the drug in question--a
light touch for marijuana, an extremely dissuasive one for heroin.
Such legalisation would not magically dispense with the need for
policemen, but it would make the needed policing more manageable.
Particularly in the business of softer drugs, where the taxes can be lower
and the restrictions less onerous, and where the first trial steps towards
legalisation should take place, it would undermine the "risk premium" that
provides drug cartels with their profits. Taxes raised on what is
reckoned to be the world's largest untaxed industry would help governments
spend money on treatment and education, which would do more good than the
billions currently spent on attempting to throttle the criminal supply of
drugs of all sorts.
The Quest for Soma [Heading in bold print --Wonko]
There is another consideration, one for the future. The
illegality of drugs, coupled with distaste for pleasurable addiction, is
skewing research. Progress is being made by scientists in understanding
both what causes the pleasure of drugs and what makes the pleasure so hard
to give up (see page 105 [I'll type this one in too --Wonko]). Currently
such research is obliged to have only one aim--unhooking existing addicts.
It might have another. In many areas of pharmacology, researchers are
exploring the idea of "designer drugs", chemicals tailored to fit
harmlessly into human biochemistry. Addiction research should be
encouraged to do the same: to move beyond devising better therapies for
those who wish to kick the drug habit, into the invention of safer, more
effective and less habit-forming highs. At the moment it cannot, for a
safe drug equals a "substance abuse" equals a crime.
The fact remains that any legal regime which lowers the economic
incentive for drugs-crime will surely boost drug consumption. The
question is by how much. One possible pointer is that, when asked, people
say it will not rise a lot. In opinion polls, Americans generally insist
that they would not be persuaded by legalisation to try drugs they are not
taking now. There is some reason to believe them, despite the first
instinct to be sceptical, since they already have access to plenty of
mindbending substances, from alcohol and tobacco to diet pills.
Then there is reassurance from experiments. The American states
that decriminalised marijuana during the 1970s saw no divergence in the
consumption of the drug from that in neighbouring states which continued
to prohibit it. Extensive experience with decriminalisation in Holland
shows that not only is there no accompanying surge in
consumption--allowing for the inrush of addicts from more restrictive
countries--but related crime falls when drugs are legalised.
One further argument is used by defenders of the status quo. They
say that, even if the case for exploring legalisation were conceded by
governments, public resistance would doom the idea. This is hardly
surprising, given the way governments the would over have for decades
hammered home the dogma of prohibition. A more rational discussion could
do much to change public opinion. Only a few years before alcohol
prohibition was repealed in the United States in 1933, public sentiment
was similarly dominated by the opinions of the country's prohibitionist
leaders.
There are signs that public instincts are changing. In recent
months a growing number of federal judges and lawyers have voiced their
exasperation with America's approach to drugs. Their objections led
politicians in Washington to hold a meeting earlier this month to rethink
the country's failed drugs policies. Janet Reno, the attorney-general,
started the day be describing her doubts about America's current approach.
It ended, significantly, with a discussion of the merits of legalisation.
Neither Mr. Brown nor Ms. Reno, and certainly not their boss Mr. Clinton,
has so far supported legalisation. But they have done what no American
administration has dared do in living memory--set the scene for a proper
debate.
---------------------
Well, so much for the first article. On page 31 of the same issue, there
is a piece called "Drugs policy: The enemy within", which is reproduced
just below. Again, all typos are likely to be mine.
---------------------
A quiet revolt has been taking place in courtrooms across America.
It has been led by judges disillusioned with the country's war on drugs.
On April 29th Harold Greene, a prominent federal judge in
Washington, ruled that important elements of the mandatory sentencing laws
for drugs offenders were unconstitutional. Less than two weeks earlier,
two senior federal judges, Jack Weinstein, and Whitman Knapp, of New York,
had announced that they would no longer preside over drugs cases. In
recent months, a number of federal judges have taken such a stance. It
might be a sign, much further down the road, of a change in policy.
Lee Brown, the former New York police chief who was appointed as
"drug tsar" by Bill Clinton on April 28th, is thought to be a good
appointment. Apart from that, Mr Clinton has not done much with drugs
policy. Granted, he has been in office a short while, and has had much to
occupy him. But his drug-policy staff has been cut, and the budget
request he has sent to Congress looks just like the one sent by George
Bush. He has asked for much the same amount of money, divided up in the
same way: two-thirds of the money to criminal-enforcement efforts,
one-third to treatment.
Some had hoped for a change of emphasis. Although the "war on
drugs" was first promoted by Richard Nixon in 1972, it was not until
George Bush's term that the war began in earnest. Mr Bush appointed
though-talking drug tsars and spent $40 billion to attack traffickers
abroad and punish pushers and users at home. The result has been
disappointing. cocaine is available about as freely and cheaply today as
in 1989. Drug-related violence in the cities is still high.
The most praiseworthy part of the Bush policy was a drop in
overall cocaine-taking. But hard-core addicts, who account for
four-fifths of all consumption, are taking as much as ever. Mark Kleiman,
of Harvard University, argues that Mr Bush's policies, put in place soon
after the peak in cocaine's popularity, did little to affect a decline
already under way. Changing fashion (including the recent surge in
heroin-taking) probably deserves the credit for that.
If casual consumption of cocaine is down, it may well be the
result of education and treatment programmes rather than criminal
enforcement. But enforcement has been, and remains, the core of American
policy. Presidents, naturally, do not want to be seen to condone the
taking of drugs; the public temper is for stiff penalties and the locking
up of offenders, not tender care. But the effect of the policy, as the
American Bar Association pointed out in a recent report, is that the
country's prisons are filled not only with drug-handlers but also with
drug-takers, and cannot cope with the numbers. Neal Sonnett, the head of
the ABA's criminal-justice section, notes with particular alarm the sharp
rise in incarceration of low-level drug offenders, which has hindered
efforts to fight more serious, and violent, crime. He thinks the
criminal-justice system may be "on the point of collapse".
If it is, it will be for reasons to do with overall levels of
sentencing for many sorts of crimes, not merely those related to drugs.
But such arguments livened up a drugs meeting held in Washington on May
7th to rethink America's policies. At the start of the day Janet Reno,
the attorney-general, admitted dissatisfaction with the present emphasis
on enforcement efforts, and suggested the mandatory sentencing guidelines
might be reviewed. The speech confirmed hints from Mr. Clinton that,
despite his status-quo budget, he plants to cut back on enforcement
efforts, especially overseas, in favour of trying to reduce demand at
home.
Another significant aspect of the meeting was the openness of
debate. Prohibition was not unquestioningly supported. Ethan Nadelmann,
a drugs expert who heads the Princeton Working Group, which is developing
alternative ideas to prohibition, notes that legalisation of drugs was
given a serious hearing. The way forward, he believes, is towards "harm
reduction". Such efforts, like the one supported by Kurt Schmoke, the
mayor of Baltimore, build on programmes from parts of Europe and Australia
which treat drug-taking not as a criminal matter, but more as an issue of
personal choice and public health.
A small chorus has applauded such a shift in resources, arguing
that prohibition of drugs will always fail so long as Americans remain so
determined to get hold of them. Mr. Clinton, who got himself in plenty of
trouble during the campaign for not inhaling marijuana, is unlikely to go
that far.
-------------------
Finally, the last article is in the "Science and Technology" section of
this issue. It's the longest of the three articles, and starts with a
photo montage showing various pills, vials, crystals, lines on mirrors, a
needle and a spoon, a roulette wheel, and a Nintendo Game Boy. The title
of the article is "High and hooked". Yet again, typos are most likely
mine.
-------------------
A better understanding of how addictions work could provide benefits for
science, for medicine and for recreation [header in bold on top of the
article --wonko]
In 1964 Aryeh Routtenberg stuck electrodes into the brains of his
experimental rats. The electrodes were so positioned that current flowing
though them caused a particular pleasure. For one hour a day, each rat
could control this current by means of a lever in its cage. Another
lever, which also worked for just that one hour, controlled the food
supply. There was no contest between the levers. The rats, too busy
mainlining current to stop for food, wasted away to ecstatic death.
The link between pleasure and addiction is not always so extreme,
but more mundane addictions have brought about millions of less dramatic
deaths outside the laboratory, and caused untold misery and pain. The
substances to which people get addicted, though, also bring great pleasure
to billions--some addicted, some not. They are the basis of several
multi-billion dollar industries around the world. Some 60m Americans
smoke tobacco; three-quarters of West European adults drink alcohol; no
one knows how many people around the world consume caffeine in tea, coffee
or cola. Figures for illegal drugs are harder to come by, but around 2m
Americans are thought to take cocaine, and many more than that have smokes
marijuana.
Not all the people who indulge in these tastes are addicts--that
is, they do not depend on their habit in a way that seems clearly abnormal
to the bulk of people who do not share their tastes. Though almost
everyone who smokes tobacco is hooked, drinkers are not necessarily
alcoholics and not all heroin users are hopeless junkies. Pleasure and
the addiction need not come together--either can be present without the
other. yet the two are obviously connected. Neuroscientists are now
using the tools of molecular biology to find the links between them, deep
in the recesses of the brain.
The kick from cocaine [boldface paragraph header --Wonko]
The cerebral nooks and crannies of interest are those between
nerve cells--synapses. To jump over the gap between two cells, a nerve
impulse has to be translated from electricity to chemicals and back. The
first cell releases a chemical called a neurotransmitter into the synaptic
gap. These molecules are then picked up by receptor proteins on the
surface of the second cell. The neurotransmitter fits the receptor as a
key fits a lock. The unlocking of the receptor leads to the creation or
suppression of a nerve impulse in the second cell.
There are many different types of neurotransmitter, and thus of
synapse; different pathways in the brain need their different properties.
It is by subverting some of these synapses, and thus some of the brain's
pathways, that drugs produce pleasure. it is through changing them in a
more fundamental way that the drugs cause addiction.
The first evidence for this is almost 20 years old. Recently it
has started to pile up quite quickly. In 1975 Solomon Snyder, at Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore, Hans Kosterlitz of the University of
Aberdeen in Scotland and John Hughes of Parke-Davis, and English
pharmaceuticals company, found out how heroin, then drug-du-jour for
worried policy-makers, works. Dr. Snyder discovered there was a receptor
protein in mammalian brains which heroin would stick to. Dr. Kosterlitz
and Dr. Hughes reasoned that nature was unlikely to have produced such a
lock without also evolving a key.
Working independently, they found a chemical in the body that
fitted into the same receptor as heroin; Dr. Kosterlitz named it
"endorphin". This type of neurotransmitter (there are, it turns out, at
least three different endorphins) damps down pain by suppressing the
signals which transmit it; it also provides feelings of well-being.
heroin acts as an ill-fitting key which can open the lock but cannot then
be withdrawn. The synapse is over-stimulated. Unusually pleasurable
sensations result.
If you replace heroin and endorphins with nicotine and the
neurotransmitter acetylcholine, or with caffeine and adenosine, or Valium
and gamma-amino butyric acid, or marijuana and anadamide, the same story
can be told. Other drugs work in slightly more subtle ways. Alcohol does
not mimic a neurotransmitter, but at least some of its effects come from
messing up the same synapses that heroin works on.
Cocaine, which has replaced heroin as the drug of concern in
America, and has thus been extensively researched, works on nerves that
use the neurotransmitter dopamine. These nerves are found in, among other
places, the mesolimbic system--the part of the brain which seems to
generate emotion. Cocaine subverts the pathway not by binding to dopamine
receptors, but by sticking to a molecule called, inelegantly, the dopamine
re-uptake transporter.
Nerve cells, canny little things, recycle their neurtransmitters.
Receptor molecules spit out their neurotransmitters once they have served
their purpose, and the cell whence they came mops them up for reuse.
Block this re-uptake, and the transmitters will just sit in the synaptic
gap, stimulating the receptors again and again and again. Another
strategy is to jam the re-uptake system open, so that dopamine flows
though it the wrong way all the time, keeping the gap suffused with the
neurotransmitter. That is what amphetamines do.
The fact that amphetamines and cocaine work in similar ways will
come as no surprise to anyone who has tried both. The nature of the high
a drug provides depends on the type of neurotransmitter it interferes
with. but the brain is a complex place; the separate systems within it
that use different neurotransmitters all interact. A drug acting on one
set of synapses can have secondary and tertiary effects all over the
place. That is why drug experiences are so varied.
The range of things that can be addictive, though, is wider even
than the range of available drugs. Foreign bodies in the synapses are not
an absolute prerequisite for an addiction. Something as straightforward
as healthy exercise can, in the extreme, hook. In the case of exercise it
appears that the body becomes addicted to the endorphins it produces to
ameliorate the pain and stress.
Other behaviours that carry an intensity with them--and thus
presumable overstimulate some parts of the brain's wiring--can produce
similar effects, though the synapses involved have yet to be charted.
Gambling has many of the characteristics of drug taking--a euphoric high,
and a craving in the addict. Some people believe themselves addicted to
sex; lawyers in England recently convinced a jury that a teenage hacker
was addicted to computing. [OH MY GOD! NETNEWS IS ADDICTIVE! QUICK, GO
TO ALT.ABUSE.RECOVERY! --Wonko ;-)]
It is easy to see some such "addictions" as excuses, especially as
the term resists strict definition. But addiction to chemicals is clearly
real, and there seems no reason to believe that compulsive chemical-taking
is necessarily in a different class from other acquired compulsive habits.
Anyway, chemical dependency is easier to study than other sorts. That is
why it has been possible to locate the roots of pleasure in the
synapses--and why it has been possible to find the roots of withdrawal
there, too.
Cold turkey [boldface header --Wonko]
Clinically, addiction can be characterised by two things: craving and
withdrawal. Craving is still the subject of a certain amount of
scientific handwaving. The best the psychologists can do is describe the
process as one of positive re-inforcement--which means that if you like
something, you will tend to do it again. Having their receptors
overstimulated is something people tend to like a lot. How this "liking"
translates into neural circuitry is not yet clear.
Withdrawal, the physical and mental turmoil that follows when an
addiction is interrupted, is proving more tractable to experimental
analysis. A suggestive picture of how it works can be pieced together, as
long as you do not mind taking the pieces from different studies of
different drugs: work on cocaine by Nora Volcow at Brookhaven National
Laboratory, among others; on cocaine and amphetamines by Bruce Cohen of
McLean Hospital in Boston; on heroin by Zvi Vogel at the Weizmann
Institute in Rehovot in Israel and Antol Shofelmeer at the Free University
in Amsterdam; an on benzodiazepines (such as Valium) by Erick Sigel at the
University of Berne.
Again, the synapse is the scene of the action. Most biological
systems have feedback mechanisms that help smooth out the little
fluctuations that life throws at them. Synapses are no exception. The
receiving cell can adjust itself to changes in the behaviour of the
transmitting cell in two ways. It can finetune the signal the receptors
pass on, and it can change the number of receptors.
The receptor molecules are conduits for information, with one end
outside the cell and the other inside. When a neurotransmitter attaches
itself outside, the part on the inside changes its shape. In this new
shape, it can accommodate molecules called G-proteins, which hang around
inside the cell. These G-proteins are, themselves, also shape-changers.
Interacting with the receptor activates the G-proteins; these then head
off to spread the word via yet more molecules, called second messengers.
the second messengers tell the cell about the signal from the
neurotransmitters. One part of the cell that listens is the system which
sends out and suppresses nerve impulses. Another avid audience is made up
of the enzymes which add phosphate groups to proteins, some of which help
in the production of impulses. More messages make them more active, and
more likely to add phosphate to receptor molecules. A phosphorylated
receptor is an unhappy receptor. It is reluctant to accommodate
G-proteins and thus to bring information in from the outside.
The nucleus, which controls the production of proteins, and also
listens to the second messengers. Lots of chatter from them suggests to
the nucleus that there are too many receptors at the synapse, so it brings
their manufacture to a halt. Insert an addictive drug into the system and
the din from the second messengers becomes deafening. The result is fewer
receptor molecules.
Both the phosphorylation of receptors and their absence means that
it takes more of the drug to obtain the same effect. Those high doses, in
turn, lead to even less sensitive synapses. And they also lead to
synapses that can no longer function without the drug. The cell gets used
to damming the flood of drug-induced noise in order to be able to deal
with the faint whispers of reality that float on top of it. Remove the
drug, and the normal signals can no longer get over the barrier that has
been erected. The system goes from getting too much of the
neurotransmitter's effects to not enough; heaven turns to hell.
Put this way, the molecular picture seems obvious. It fits with a
common experience of addiction, that of needing to do more and more of the
drug just to keep from feeling bad. Of course, it cannot be that
simple--after all drugs that work on the same neurotransmitter may vary in
their addictiveness. And people vary, too, in their susceptibility to
addiction. Then again, addictions to substances that affect different
types of synapse can be quite similar--and some people seem to be prone to
addiction per se, rather than just to have a weakness for a particular
substance. And the fact that addiction remains after withdrawal has
ended--a fact attested to at Alcoholics Anonymous every day--suggests
there is a more general problem to look at.
Dopamine heads [boldface header --Wonko]
For more evidence that addictions have something in common in the
way they act on the brain as a whole, no matter which pathways they
stimulate, look at the pictures on this page. [two computer imaged
pictures with lighter and darker patches, one of the left half of a brain,
and another of the right half. The left half has darker blotches. Under
the left half is the caption "Your brain" and, as you might expect, the
right half has "Your brain on drugs" --Wonko] Edythe London, who works at
America's National Institute on Drug Abuse, studies glucose metabolism in
the brains of people with addictions. Glucose is the body's principal
fuel, so its use is a good index of how active an area is. Dr London's
pictures show that, in certain parts of the brain, addicts use less
glucose than non-addicts do. The difference applies regardless of what
drug is being used, and it is still visible when they are not under the
influence.
Other clues to a general theory of addiction have led researchers
to focus on the dopamine system--even when looking at drugs which do not
affect dopamine receptors. There is evidence that many, and possibly all,
addictions affect the dopamine cells in the brain's mesolimbic system. In
the case of cocaine this effect is direct, which may account for the
drug's peculiar potency. for other drugs it seems to be indirect, brought
about by connections between the dopamine system and the other
neurotransmitter systems.
Inside the dopamine system, the researchers' attention has lighted
on D2. it should come as no surprise by now to hear that D2 is a protein
found in synapses, one of the three different receptor proteins for
dopamine. The detailed make-up of these proteins can vary from person to
person--variation that comes from differences in the gene which describes
the protein. So the different variants of D2 are inherited.
It was inheritance that led the researchers to D2. In the 1970s a
series of Danish studies compared the children and step-children of
alcoholic fathers. The former proved more likely to succumb to the same
addiction. This, and the evidence that identical twins are more likely to
share an alcoholic fate than are non-identical twins, suggested that genes
were playing a role. In 1990, to great excitement, Kenneth Blum of the
University of Texas at San Antonio, and Ernest Noble of the University of
California, Los Angeles, announced that they had found a gene peculiarly
common among alcoholics. It described a form of the D2 receptor known as
A1.
This was challenged by several researchers, most notably Kenneth
Kidd, of Yale. Dr. Kidd points out that different ethnic groups have
different frequencies of A1, which could confuse the statistics. Others,
convinced by Dr. Blum, Dr. Noble and subsequent work, have suggested that
A1 frequencies may actually explain differences in alcoholism between
ethnic groups, though this is far from certain.
In 1992 George Uhl, of Johns Hopkins, found that a second variant
of D2, known as B1, seemed peculiarly common in people addicted to
tobacco, cocaine, heroin, tranquillizers, marijuana and amphetamines as
well as alcohol--almost the whole list of commonly addictive substances.
This is at least as controversial as the original finding; its meaning is
not clear, nor is the nature of the difference between the different D2s.
To link small variations in a single protein with the existence of
an all-purpose "addictive personality" is to go a long way too far. But
there is evidence in one case for a link between personality and
withdrawal symptoms--and to link withdrawal symptoms to specific molecules
is not too farfetched. About 40% of people prescribed courses of
benzodiazepines to treat anxiety or insomnia can suffer some withdrawal
symptoms--souped-up versions of the symptoms the drugs are used to
treat--after the course of medication is finished. Peter Tyrer, who
worked at St. Charles' Hospital in London, has found that the people who
suffer withdrawal share not a specific protein, but rather specific
personality traits: insecurity, inability to make decisions, an
over-reliance on the opinions of others. Spot them, and you can save
people from withdrawal.
Better living through chemistry [boldface header... gotta love these
catchphrases --Wonko]
The links between proteins, the lowly building blocks of the
brain, and personalities, the high abstractions of the mind, are
undoubtedly going to be convoluted--but evidence from both ends suggests
they are there to be found. What are the pharmaceutical companies, to
which this should be of interest, doing about it?
Some work is going into drugs to treat drug addiction. Naltrexone
keeps heroin from activating endorphin receptors, without activating them
itself. Methadone works in the same way as heroin, but less effectively;
it thus provides a way off heroin that minimises withdrawal symptoms.
Similar approaches to cocaine are being tried. Drugs which act on
dopamine pathways in general may have widespread effects on addiction.
but drugs to defeat dependence are not the only possibilities.
Some of the damage that comes from drug addiction, especially the
physical damage, comes from secondary aspects of the drug. Lung cancer,
for examples, is caused by the substances that accompany nicotine in
tobacco smoke, not by nicotine itself. It might be possible to get rid of
some of these problems without getting rid of the pleasure, even if it is
not possible to get rid of the addictions. Another option is to develop
tests which could tell people if they were at risk of falling under a
particular spell so that they could choose their pleasures wisely.
Eventually, an understanding of neurotransmitters, receptors,
G-proteins, and second messengers might allow pleasure and addiction to be
decoupled--or at least allow withdrawal to be suppressed. Though, on the
face of it, the effects that cause pleasure in the short term are those
that cause addiction in the long term, there is a lot of variability in
the system that might be exploited. Techniques like those used to target
specific dopamine receptors in the treatment of Parkinson's disease,
might, at least in principle, be used to fine tune a drug's effects at the
synapse and produce low-addiction highs. And pure substances tailored to
neurotransmitter sites would have a good chance of being free of
unpleasant side effects elsewhere in the body. That would not create a
brave new world; it might, perhaps, create a slightly happier one.
---------------------
Whew! Boy, are my fingers tired. I hope y'all appreciate the articles.
It seems to me that they're chock full of researchers names in case anyone
wants to do a little more serious reading and is willing to go through
medical journals. In any case, I hope my illegal reproduction of this
article brings people greater enlightenment.
Wonko the Sane (wonko@monkeyhouse.fremont.ca.us, NeXTMail
accepted)
To Drug Policy
Tom Swiss / tms@infamous.net
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