The director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse expressed hope about the recent breakthroughs in the treatment of drug addiction.
"The nicotine vaccine may be having the final results in the next year," said Dr. Nora Volkow. "This is very exciting because you can actually vaccinate someone and by so doing prevent them from relapse into drug taking."
There had been nothing previously available for people addicted to marijuana and cocaine, but researchers are now developing a series of mediations to help these addictions.
"So that is also very exciting. So the possibility of being able to help someone that has been struggling with the problem with drug use, to be able to take a medication that makes them actually be able to control it better," Volkow said.
Volkow was speaking recently at a conference in New Orleans, where drug use has increased, especially since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005. Volkow spoke at the conference of the 50 to 70 percent of your predilection to develop a drug addiction that is genetically determined.
"One of the factors is, for example, some of those genes may make you much more sensitive to social stressors," Volkow said.
The promising new research comes at an opportune time when drug abuse, especially of prescription drugs, is at an all-time high in the United States.
"We’ve seen attitudes about drugs erode for the last two or three years, which often predict those increases, especially in regards to marijuana. And we in the administration think that all of this talk, whether it’s about medical marijuana, or about legalization on the other hand, has spurred these kinds of softening about attitudes, because kids are now thinking, ‘Hey, this is medicine, maybe it’s actually not that harmful,’" said Dr. Kevin Sabet, the special advisor for policy to the director of National Drug Control Policy.
