-------------------------------------------------------------------

Strip club suit keeps beer flowing for free (The Oregonian says Scores, in
Northeast Salem, wants to continue to give away beer without a liquor license
and is asking a judge to declare the practice legal in a lawsuit filed Friday
in Marion County Circuit Court. The flow of free beer resumed Friday after a
day's halt for a special event.)

Newshawk: Portland NORML (http://www.pdxnorml.org/)
Pubdate: Sat, Apr 17 1999
Source: Oregonian, The (OR)
Copyright: 1999 The Oregonian
Contact: letters@news.oregonian.com
Address: 1320 SW Broadway, Portland, OR 97201
Fax: 503-294-4193
Website: http://www.oregonlive.com/
Forum: http://forums.oregonlive.com/
Author: Cheryl Martinis, correspondent, the Oregonian

Strip club suit keeps beer flowing for free

* Scores' lawsuit asserts the promotional gimmick is legal because state law
prohibits only the selling of beer without a liquor license

SALEM -- A strip club that wants to continue to give away beer without a
state liquor license is asking a judge to declare the practice legal.

Scores, in a lawsuit filed Friday in Marion County Circuit Court, asserts
that the beer promotion is legal and asks for a preliminary injunction
prohibiting the state from pursuing any administrative or criminal action
against the club.

Scores resumed the flow of free beer Friday after a day's halt for a special
event.

The Northeast Salem business, described in court papers as an "exotic
dancing club," on April 7 started offering customers ages 21 and older up to
two glasses of free beer. "Our research shows that our policy is legal,"
said Michael Spiotti, a principal in Sports Entertainment, which operates
Scores and was named as the plaintiff in the lawsuit. Spiotti made the
comment in an affidavit attached to the suit.

Oregon Liquor Control Commission officials have said they think it's illegal
for Scores to serve the beer without a liquor license.

But a Scores attorney, Kevin T. Lafky of Salem, said state law prohibits
only the selling of beer without a liquor license. In this case, he said,
Scores customers do not provide any financial consideration for the beer.
Customers who accepted free beer were not asked to pay a cover charge,
Scores Manager Dylan Salts previously said. Although they might choose to
tip a dancer or buy a burger, they are not required to do so to obtain the
beer, Lafky noted.

Scores once started to apply for a liquor license but withdrew the
application in the wake of strong neighborhood opposition and an unfavorable
recommendation from the city of Salem. The lawsuit named the state of Oregon
as the defendant.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Hayden hearings (A bulletin from California NORML says SB 1261, a bill
sponsored by state senator Tom Hayden that would create a commission on drug
policy and violence, was approved by the senate Public Safety Committee on a
6-0 vote now goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee. Here's some swing
votes to lobby.)

From: canorml@igc.apc.org (Dale Gieringer)
Reply-To: canorml@igc.apc.org (Dale Gieringer)
To: dpfca@drugsense.org
Subject: Re: DPFCA: Hayden hearings
Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 10:07:20 -0800

Good news! Sen. Hayden's bill SB 1261 to create a commission on drug
policy and violence was approved by the State Senate Public Safety
Committee on a 6-0 vote, with support from the committee's two
Republicans. The one cloud on the horizon is that it had to be
modified so as to explicitly fund the commission: this makes it an
appropriations bill, requiring a 2/3 majority for passage.

SB 1261 now goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee. Swing
votes include Betty Karnette (D-Long Beach), David Kelley
(R-Riverside/SD), Dede Alpert (D-Coronado), Richard Mountjoy
(R-Monrovia).

***

Dale Gieringer (415) 563-5858 // canorml@igc.apc.org
2215-R Market St. #278, San Francisco CA 94114

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Cannabis Has Herbal Benefits Research Can Help Unlock (An op-ed by a
professional herbalist in the Buffalo News, in New York, summarizes the
pharmacological history of cannabis.)

Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 23:34:29 -0700
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US NY: Cannabis Has Herbal Benefits Research Can Help Unlock
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: General Pulaski
Pubdate: Sat, 17 Apr 1999
Source: Buffalo News (NY)
Copyright: 1999 - The Buffalo News
Fax: 716-856-5150
Website: http://www.buffnews.com/
Author: Patra A. Mangus, a professional herbalist for the past 27 years. She
owns and operates Bi-Nutrients Herbal Information Center in Buffalo.

CANNABIS HAS HERBAL BENEFITS RESEARCH CAN HELP UNLOCK

As a child of the '60s, I was well aware of the recreational value of
cannabis. (Yes, I inhaled, but as a non-smoker, I didn't do it very well.)
Its virtues were extolled in music and films. The biggest joke was that you
were using it for "medicinal purposes."

Recently, there was an article in The News about an advisory panel that has
concluded that compounds found in marijuana are effective for easing pain
and relieving nausea. It turns out there are very real medicinal virtues to
this forbidden herb.

Cannabis has been used for centuries, by many cultures, as a drug to combat
illness. It was officially listed in pharmaceutical repertoires in Europe
and America.

One of the first professionally prepared pharmaceuticals was a compound
called Squire's Extract, used to treat typhus and rabies. There were dozens
of cannabis-based remedies available by either prescription or over the
counter, including Chlorodyne, a stomachic made by Squibb; Dr. Browns
Sedative Tablets; One Day Cough Syrup; Syrup Tolou; Syrup Lobelia; and Corn
Collodium. Parke-Davis manufactured several cannabis-based medications,
including Casadein, Utroval and Veterinary Colic medicine. Some of the
largest companies in the world were involved in their research and
development.

In time, the pharmaceutical companies stopped using cannabis because they
were unable to standardize the levels of Tetrahydrocannabinol, Cannabidiol
and Cannabinol. Without standardization, there was no profit in developing
a drug from it.

As anecdotal evidence stimulates interest in the therapeutic applications of
cannabis, "empirical" data accumulates. From this data, scientific interest
centers on conditions that responded well to the use of cannabis, the most
familiar being nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy.

As early as 1970, patients undergoing chemotherapy for Hodgkin's disease and
other cancers discovered that if they smoked cannabis before receiving
chemotherapy, they suffered less nausea and vomiting.

Research has demonstrated that cannabis has very beneficial effects on
patients suffering from glaucoma. It reduces the symptoms caused by high
ocular-fluid levels. It is a proven appetite stimulant, which can be
valuable to AIDS patients suffering from "wasting away syndrome." It even
has the potential to be used in cases of anorexia.

Cannabis is a herb that needs to be heated to release the effects of the
synergistic compounds and help the body assimilate it. That is why smoking
pot or baking it into food is the preferred way to consume it.

It is also effective when made into a hot tea and sipped slowly. This form
also helps flush the body of toxins and keeps the body hydrated. If the
pharmaceutical companies can find a more efficient delivery mechanism, such
as an inhaler, it appears that medical marijuana may become a reality.

The active compound in Cannabis, called THC, has been produced in synthetic
form by Ely Lilly and marketed under the generic name Dronabinol, and the
trade name Marinol. It has been prescribed for many of the same things that
cannabis has been used to treat. More research is being done to determine
the mechanisms that allow cannabis to affect the body's neurological system.

Hopefully, this is an area where science and medicine can join the long
historical uses of plant medicine to benefit people with serious illness and
speed their recovery. And, like the poppy plant, which gave us morphine,
marijuana can become a standard part of our pharmacopoeia.

PATRA A. MANGUS has been a professional herbalist for the past 27 years. She
owns and operates Bi-Nutrients Herbal Information Center in Buffalo.

For writer guidelines for columns appearing in this space, send a self-
addressed, stamped envelope to Opinion Pages Guidelines, The Buffalo News,
P.O. Box 100, Buffalo, N.Y. 14240.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Drug And Alcohol Use Jump In Nation's Capitol (According to an Associated
Press article in the Standard-Times, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, which
implies that alcohol is not a drug, District of Columbia Mayor Anthony
Williams cited a new report by Drug Strategies that claimed adult cocaine
and heroin use rates in the district were twice the national average in 1993,
the latest figures available. The Drug Strategies report also showed heavy
drinking was 50 percent more prevalent among adults in the capital than among
their peers nationwide, and alcohol-related deaths in the district were
double the national rate. Unfortunately, AP doesn't mention Drug Strategies'
methodology or its agenda.)

Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 16:06:41 -0700
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US DC: Drug And Alcohol Use Jump In Nation's Capitol
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: John Smith
Pubdate: Sat, 17 Apr 1999
Source: Standard-Times (MA)
Copyright: 1999 The Standard-Times
Contact: YourView@S-T.com
Website: http://www.s-t.com/
Author: Jennifer Andes, Associated Press writer

DRUG AND ALCOHOL USE JUMP IN NATION'S CAPITOL

WASHINGTON - Illicit use of drugs and alcohol has reached crisis
proportions in the nation's capital and must be dealt with quickly,
Mayor Anthony Williams said yesterday.

"We have to act now," Williams said. "Left on autopilot ..., this is
not a pretty picture."

Drug and alcohol abuse costs the District of Columbia about $1.2
billion a year and accounts for most of the district's crime problems,
Williams said.

He cited a new report by Drug Strategies, a nonprofit research
institute headquartered in the district, that said the district's
annual per capita spending on the problem amounts to $42.50 on drug
prevention and treatment and $1,257 on criminal justice. The report
recommends the city spend a greater proportion of its drug-related
funding on prevention and rehabilitation.

Williams said he was willing to consider it but gave no specifics.

According to the report, addicted prisoners are regularly released
from the district's jails and halfway houses without getting necessary
treatment. "We know we're not getting ahead of the problem," Assistant
Police Chief Terrence Gainer said. "Just locking people up is simply
not enough."

The report found adult cocaine and heroin use rates in the district
were twice the national average in 1993, the latest figures available.

Current studies cited by the report show heavy drinking is 50 percent
more prevalent among adults in the capital than among their peers
nationwide, and alcohol-related deaths in the district are double the
national rate.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Study Finds Drug Abuse At Heart Of City's Ills (The Washington Post version
is similarly one-sided and uncritical.)

Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 16:08:18 -0700
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US DC: Study Finds Drug Abuse At Heart Of City's Ills
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Jim Galasyn
Pubdate: Apr 17, 1999
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 1999 The Washington Post Company
Address: 1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071
Feedback: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Author: Sari Horwitz

STUDY FINDS DRUG ABUSE AT HEART OF CITY'S ILLS

Mayor Promises More Treatment

Cocaine and heroin use rates among District residents are twice the
national average. Heavy drinking is 50 percent more prevalent among
D.C. adults than among adults nationwide. And alcohol-related
mortality is double the national rate, as is the percentage of
residents who need alcohol and other drug treatment, according to a
report released yesterday.

Continuing problems with drug and alcohol use -- particularly among
youths -- present one of the biggest challenges to Mayor Anthony A.
Williams's efforts to improve living conditions in the District, city
officials said yesterday in announcing the study by the nonprofit
group Drug Strategies. They said drug use is linked with much of what
ails the city -- including joblessness, child abuse, domestic violence
and crime -- and has been exacerbated by a lack of drug treatment and
prevention programs.

The two-year study, which officials called the most comprehensive of
its kind to date, also found that marijuana use by D.C. teenagers is
increasing. The city's drug-related arrests are going up, and the
number of D.C. high school students who reported being offered, sold
or given an illicit drug on school property more than doubled from
1993 to 1997.

Williams said the study shows, in stark terms, why the District must
dedicate more resources to keeping youths away from drugs and boosting
programs for adults whose lives have been sidetracked by substance
abuse. The mayor is currently proposing to spend $26 million on drug
prevention and treatment programs. He vowed to increase the amount of
money in his budget for such programs, but did not say by how much.

"We hear you, and we will overlook this problem no longer," said
Williams, who received a copy of the report during the news conference
at Covenant House Washington, a nonprofit in Southeast Washington that
helps troubled youths. "Left on autopilot with these statistics, this
is not a pretty picture. We cannot allow this to happen."

The newest statistics on the lack of treatment programs indicate that
while drug use is going up, the number of outpatient slots and
inpatient beds available has dropped by 50.3 percent over the last
five years.

"We need to find a lot of money here," said D.C. Council member Jim
Graham (D-Ward 1). "The drug treatment budget has been cut by $15
million since 1994. I'm encouraged by the mayor's willingness to
consider increases in funding, but we've got to identify specific
dollars in significant amounts to make a difference."

Among the city's 2,500 child protective cases, 85 percent involve a
parent who abuses alcohol or other drugs, the report found, and
parental drug abuse is a factor in 75 percent of the foster-care
cases. Executive Assistant Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer said that
the D.C. police department makes one drug arrest an hour. Recently,
Gainer said, he was at a crime scene when a woman approached him. "I'm
a junkie," he recalled her saying. "Can you get me a [drug treatment]
bed?" He couldn't; there weren't any available.

"At that moment, a person was reaching out for help, and the city
wasn't able to provide it," Gainer said.

The health care costs of alcohol and drug use to the District exceed
$1.2 billion, according to the 40-page study, which was supported by
grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Bonderman Family
Foundation and the Fannie Mae Foundation.

In low-income, predominantly black communities east of the Anacostia
River, "you can always find a liquor store without going far," said
Vincent Gray, former director of the District's Department of Human
Services. Gray is now executive director of Covenant House Washington
and a member of the advisory panel of Drug Strategies.

Although the District spends more per capita on law enforcement than
any other city in the nation, D.C. officials have not spent all of the
funding available to fight drug abuse in recent years, the report
concluded. The city spends $43 per capita on drug prevention and
treatment, compared with $1,257 per capita on criminal justice.

Nearly 70 percent of all arrestees test positive for drugs, while
fewer than 10 percent receive drug treatment, and two-thirds of D.C.
homicides appear related to alcohol or drug use, the study found.

"Drug arrests are basically driving the criminal justice system," said
Mathea Falco, president of Drug Strategies.

In 1997, 617 young people were arrested for drug offenses, a 37
percent increase over 1992. Cocaine and heroin arrests (mostly for
possession) made up 52 percent of juvenile drug arrests, with 47
percent of the arrests for marijuana. Males, ages 14 to 19, make up
just 3 percent of the District's population but account for 19 percent
of all drug arrests in the city.

The District also has the nation's third-highest alcohol consumption
rate per capita -- equivalent to nearly three six-packs of beer per
person every week, the report said. And most alcohol outlets licensed
for off-premise sales are in city neighborhoods with predominantly
African American residents.

The District's alcohol excise tax rates are among the lowest in the
country, and revenue is not earmarked for prevention, treatment or law
enforcement efforts to reduce alcohol-related problems, the report
said, adding that the city's tobacco licensing agency also lacks the
authority to impose fines and suspend or revoke a license because of
sales to minors.

"The gateway to substance abuse is wide open," said D.C. financial
control board member Eugene Kinlow. "But the exits are dimly lit and
poorly marked. We have to reverse this."

-------------------------------------------------------------------

'Crisis' Of Black Males Gets High-Profile Look (The Washington Post says
nationally, one in three young black men is under the supervision of the
criminal justice system, and the rate approaches 50 percent in some states.
In all, 12 states and the District of Columbia imprison blacks at rates 10
times those of whites, according to the latest government figures. The
composite picture has become so alarming that the U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights made it the subject of an unusual two-day conference this week in
Washington, D.C.)

Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 00:16:06 -0700
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US: 'Crisis' Of Black Males Gets High-Profile Look
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Jo-D Harrison Dunbar
Pubdate: Sat, 17 Apr 1999
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 1999 The Washington Post Company
Address: 1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071
Feedback: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Author: Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post Staff Writer

'CRISIS' OF BLACK MALES GETS HIGH-PROFILE LOOK

Rights Panel Probes Crime, Joblessness, Other Ills

The problems confronting young black males are staggering: They are far more
likely than whites to be sent to prison, to fall victim to homicide, to
suffer serious illness, to fail at school and to be unemployed.

Nationally, one in three young black men is under the supervision of the
criminal justice system, and the rates approach 50 percent in some states.
In all, 12 states and the District of Columbia imprison blacks at rates 10
times those of whites, according to the latest government figures.

Overall, black males have a life expectancy of 66.1 years, compared with
73.9 for white men. About 74 percent of black men graduate from high school,
compared with 86 percent of whites. In some areas, unemployment among black
men is three times that of whites.

The composite picture has become so alarming that the U.S. Commission on
Civil Rights made it the subject of an unusual two-day conference here this
week. "This is a very real and serious and difficult issue," said Mary
Frances Berry, head of the commission. "This crisis has broad implications
for the future of the race."

But unlike many topics explored by the commission, which usually probes
issues that are seen as direct results of racial bias, there is no consensus
on the main cause of the crisis afflicting black males. Is it social
pathology? Racial discrimination? Or both?

Experts told the commission that much of the problem is related to the
breakdown of families, the prevalence of drugs and the lack of economic
opportunity in many poor, black communities. For years, civil rights groups
have urged the government to redouble its efforts to help troubled families
by increasing spending for Head Start, education and job training programs
and by providing additional counseling and crisis intervention. Beyond that,
however, the experts said there is a need to fill the voids in the lives of
many young black men.

"One-on-one interaction. Small group instruction, small group counseling.
Those are the things that make the difference," said Bill Highsmith, an aide
to D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, who volunteers as a youth mentor.

Witnesses also told the commission that black youth suffer because they are
targeted as potential criminals by police, frequently receive poor legal
representation if they are arrested and typically receive more and longer
prison sentences than whites. In a speech Thursday, Attorney General Janet
Reno condemned the use of racial profiling--which assumes that black males
are apt to commit crimes--as a law enforcement tool.

Surveys have found that African Americans constitute 15 percent of the
nation's drug users but make up a third of those arrested on drug charges
and 57 percent of those convicted on drug charges. Once convicted on drug
charges, studies have found, blacks receive on average one year more in
prison than whites, which some see as evidence of discrimination. But others
argue that black men are sent to prison at higher rates and for longer
periods of time only because they are more likely than others to be involved
in serious crime.

Whatever the reason, the high rates of incarceration have consequences that
extend deep into black communities. Not only are neighborhoods stripped of
many men who might otherwise be part of the social fabric--doing things like
coaching recreation league teams and providing stability for their
families--but the loss of population also reduces the many forms of
government aid linked to the number of people who live in a specific
community. Ironically, convicted blacks are frequently shifted to rural white
areas, where many prisons and inmates are counted as part of the population.

"What happens really amounts to a transfer of wealth from one community to
another," said Tracy Huling, a consultant who presented a paper to the
commission.

In education, black males are typically the lowest achievers and the most
likely to be suspended or expelled from school. Some experts blame that on
the absence of black male role models, teaching styles that don't make
allowances for the high energy levels of black boys, and low teacher
expectations.

But there are also studies that say teacher expectations grow from firsthand
experience. Also, experts have found that some black boys mistakenly believe
that to do well in school is somehow a betrayal of their race.

When it comes to health issues, black men are more likely than others to die
violently or as the result of chronic illnesses including AIDS, diabetes,
hypertension, heart disease, cancer and stroke. Berry said that beyond early
childhood, many black men have little contact with doctors outside of
emergency situations.

In all, 14 expert consultants and 11 government, religious and other leaders
were to address the commission's conference. The commission has no
legislative or judicial power, but Berry said it will use the information
gathered at the conference to advocate policy changes to address the problems.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

New Drugs For Old Habits (The Economist, in Britain, says advances in the
understanding of how alcohol, cocaine, heroin and nicotine affect the brain
at the cellular and molecular level are leading to new approaches to treating
substance abuse. A few companies such as Merck and DuPont have already taken
the plunge, at least for alcohol abuse.)

Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 17:22:38 -0700
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: UK: New Drugs For Old Habits
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: D. Paul Stanford http://www.crrh.org/
Pubdate: Sat., 17 April 1999
Source: Economist, The (UK)
Copyright: 1999. The Economist Newspaper Limited.
Contact: letters@economist.com
Website: http://www.economist.com/
Note: The Economist includes related web links below on it's website. They
may not appear in the print edition.

NEW DRUGS FOR OLD HABITS

Advances In Both Science And Social Attitudes Could Lead To Novel
Treatments For Drug And Alcohol Addiction

IN THE world of addiction, ingenuity knows few bounds. People have
always had a knack for getting high, and sometimes hooked, on the most
unlikely substances, from mushrooms to poppies. But though modern
pharmacology has created hundreds of new drugs, both legal and
illicit, for would-be junkies, it has offered few that can deal with
the problem of addiction itself.

Until now. Advances in the understanding of how alcohol, cocaine,
heroin and nicotine affect the brain at the cellular and molecular
level are leading to new approaches to treating substance abuse. The
challenge, say addiction experts, is to persuade drug companies to
develop these bright ideas into marketable products with the same
enthusiasm they have for drugs to treat cancer, say, or depression.

A few companies have taken the plunge, at least for alcohol abuse.
Consider acamprosate, a new drug made by Merck Lipha, a company based
in Lyons, France. The compound, which helps reformed alcoholics stay
off the bottle after detoxification, is finishing late-stage clinical
trials in America, and has been on the market in Europe since 1995.
How it works is still uncertain. Acamprosate is known to bind to a
protein on nerve cells in the brain called the NMDA receptor, which is
normally involved in relaying excitatory signals between nerve cells.
Alcohol withdrawal boosts the receptor's activity and reduces the
effects of other inhibitory proteins, sending the brain into a
twitter, and the drinker in search of liquor.

Joseph Volpicelli, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania,
reckons that acamprosate may act by dampening the hyperactive NMDA
receptor, restoring the balance between excitation and inhibition in
the brain, so keeping reformed alcoholics on the wagon. At any rate,
in large-scale clinical trials in Europe, twice as many alcoholics
taking acamprosate stayed dry after a year of daily dosing compared
with those receiving a placebo.

Acamprosate may prove a good partner for naltrexone, another
anti-alcoholism drug launched by America's DuPont in 1995. Naltrexone
has been found to lower the high associated with drinking and to
diminish craving. It is not a new drug: it was approved 15 years ago
to treat heroin addiction. But old drugs, often developed for quite
different disorders, tend to find new uses in addiction medicine,
largely because of the lack of drugs tailor-made to deal with
substance abuse.

Another difficulty, says Dr Volpicelli, is that most alcoholics and
doctors are largely unaware of these new medical treatments. And many
Americans believe that, unlike other diseases such as cancer,
addiction is a moral rather than a medical problem. Even such
long-established drugs as methadone, for treating heroin addiction,
are controversial in America, and new drugs take much longer to be
accepted than in Europe.

There is also plenty of room for improvement in administering the
drugs. One big problem with naltrexone is that users often forget,
deliberately or otherwise, to take their pills. One solution, now
being tested by Drug Abuse Sciences, a biotechnology company in Menlo
Park, California, is to repackage naltrexone from pill form into
microspheres that can be implanted under the skin. In animal tests,
this slow-release system sustained steady levels of the compound for
one month. Drug Abuse Sciences is hoping to try it on human volunteers
in clinical trials later this month.

Similarly, experts are hoping for a technical fix to one of the most
offputting aspects of methadone treatment for middle-class heroin
addicts, namely the nuisance and humiliation of queuing up at a
down-at-heel clinic in the inner city. Drug experts like Westley
Clark, director of the Centre for Substance Abuse Treatment in
Rockville, Maryland, are hoping to introduce more amenable means of
distributing newer, potentially more effective drugs for heroin
treatment (such as buprenorphine, now in clinical trials in America)
to these addicts. These drugs could, he suggests, be prescribed to
some patients by their own doctors.

Kicking the habit

The urge to drink or take drugs is, neurochemically speaking, linked
to endorphins (natural morphine-like molecules) or dopamine, a
neurotransmitter that is involved in bits of the brain that control
reward behaviour. A better grasp of how such reward pathways work is
leading to new drugs to treat even the enfant terrible of narcotics,
cocaine. According to Frank Vocci, a director of medications
development at America's National Institute of Drug Abuse, several
drugs are on the way that block the drug-induced craving associated
with cocaine. And the range of drug therapies will grow, he believes,
as new genes associated with drug and alcohol addiction are found.

Among the new approaches is a cocaine-like molecule now in clinical
safety trials from Neurosearch, a Copenhagen-based biotechnology firm.
This drug attaches itself to a protein that is responsible for pumping
dopamine back into nerve cells after its release. This same pump is
targeted by cocaine, which rapidly blocks it and so boosts dopamine
levels, causing an intense high. Neurosearch's compound stops cocaine
from binding to the receptor by getting in the way and gradually
brings dopamine levels back to normal. Cocaine-addicted baboons
treated with the molecule stopped injecting themselves, with no sign
of becoming hooked on the treatment instead.

An even more intriguing approach to cocaine addiction uses the immune
system--which can be coaxed into producing antibodies to just about
anything--to attack drugs. Drug Abuse Sciences has been generating
antibodies to cocaine in horses and using them to mop up cocaine in
the bloodstream of other experimental animals before it reaches the
brain and heart. The company believes that these antibodies might one
day be useful for treating cocaine overdoses.

Donald Landry and his team at Columbia University in New York have
also developed antibodies to cocaine, but with a twist. As well as
sticking to cocaine, their antibodies also break it up into bits,
which more thoroughly removes it from the system. Cocaine-addicted
rats lost their appetite for the drug after receiving a few doses of
Dr Landry's catalytic antibodies. And Cantab Pharmaceuticals, a
Cambridge-based biotechnology firm, has almost finished safety trials
with its anti-cocaine vaccine designed to stimulate an addict's own
immune system to fight off the drug, just as it might a bacterial
infection. The company plans to try a similar approach for nicotine
addiction.

Weaning smokers from their weed is an alluring prospect for large
pharmaceutical companies interested in millions of customers and
billions of dollars in sales. But developing drugs for other
addictions is a riskier commercial proposition, largely because so
many addicts are poor and, in America at least, their health insurance
will not always pay the bill.

Yet every dollar spent on drug-abuse treatment could save as much as
seven times that in medical and social costs. With such a prize at
stake, all it may take to get more drug companies into the business of
addiction, according to Dr Volpicelli, is one success story, such as
Prozac. Until that happens, though, academics and biotechnology firms
will remain busy trying to lift addiction drug development out of depression.

LINKS

Acamprosate, the compound which helps reformed alcoholics stay
off the bottle after detoxification, is produced by Merck Lipha.
DuPont is the manufacturer of naltrexone, another anti-alcoholism
drug. The issues surrounding addiction medicine can be found at the
American Society of Addiction Medicine. Information on the issues of
drug-dependence can be found at the Lindesmith Center and the National
Institute on Drug Abuse. More general substance abuse information is
available at the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services
Administration. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
is here. The White House website on drugs policy is here. A web links
resource on addiction related topics is here. Additional information
can be found at the Addiction Resource Guide.

Merck Lipha:
http://www.lipha.com/

Dupont:
http://www.dupont.com/

American Society of Addiction Medicine:
http://www.asam.org/

Lindesmith Center:
http://www.lindesmith.org/

National Institute on Drug Abuse:
http://www.nida.nih.gov/

Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration:
http://www.samhsa.gov/

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism:
http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/

The White House website on drugs policy:
http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/

A web links resource on addiction related topics:
http://www.well.com/user/woa/aodsites.htm

Addiction Resource Guide:
http://www.hubplace.com/addictions/

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