research articles on narcotics

Understanding Drug Use and Addiction DrugFacts

Many people don't understand why or how other people become addicted to drugs. They may mistakenly think that those who use drugs lack moral principles or willpower and that they could stop their drug use simply by choosing to. In reality, drug addiction is a complex disease, and quitting usually takes more than good intentions or a strong will. Drugs change the brain in ways that make quitting hard, even for those who want to. Fortunately, researchers know more than ever about how drugs affect the brain and have found treatments that can help people recover from drug addiction and lead productive lives.

What Is drug addiction?

Addiction is a chronic disease characterized by drug seeking and use that is compulsive, or difficult to control, despite harmful consequences. The initial decision to take drugs is voluntary for most people, but repeated drug use can lead to brain changes that challenge an addicted person’s self-control and interfere with their ability to resist intense urges to take drugs. These brain changes can be persistent, which is why drug addiction is considered a "relapsing" disease—people in recovery from drug use disorders are at increased risk for returning to drug use even after years of not taking the drug.

It's common for a person to relapse, but relapse doesn't mean that treatment doesn’t work. As with other chronic health conditions, treatment should be ongoing and should be adjusted based on how the patient responds. Treatment plans need to be reviewed often and modified to fit the patient’s changing needs.

Video: Why are Drugs So Hard to Quit?

What happens to the brain when a person takes drugs?

Most drugs affect the brain's "reward circuit," causing euphoria as well as flooding it with the chemical messenger dopamine. A properly functioning reward system motivates a person to repeat behaviors needed to thrive, such as eating and spending time with loved ones. Surges of dopamine in the reward circuit cause the reinforcement of pleasurable but unhealthy behaviors like taking drugs, leading people to repeat the behavior again and again.

As a person continues to use drugs, the brain adapts by reducing the ability of cells in the reward circuit to respond to it. This reduces the high that the person feels compared to the high they felt when first taking the drug—an effect known as tolerance. They might take more of the drug to try and achieve the same high. These brain adaptations often lead to the person becoming less and less able to derive pleasure from other things they once enjoyed, like food, sex, or social activities.

Long-term use also causes changes in other brain chemical systems and circuits as well, affecting functions that include:

• decision-making

Despite being aware of these harmful outcomes, many people who use drugs continue to take them, which is the nature of addiction.

Why do some people become addicted to drugs while others don't?

No one factor can predict if a person will become addicted to drugs. A combination of factors influences risk for addiction. The more risk factors a person has, the greater the chance that taking drugs can lead to addiction. For example:

• Biology . The genes that people are born with account for about half of a person's risk for addiction. Gender, ethnicity, and the presence of other mental disorders may also influence risk for drug use and addiction.
• Environment . A person’s environment includes many different influences, from family and friends to economic status and general quality of life. Factors such as peer pressure, physical and sexual abuse, early exposure to drugs, stress, and parental guidance can greatly affect a person’s likelihood of drug use and addiction.
• Development . Genetic and environmental factors interact with critical developmental stages in a person’s life to affect addiction risk. Although taking drugs at any age can lead to addiction, the earlier that drug use begins, the more likely it will progress to addiction. This is particularly problematic for teens. Because areas in their brains that control decision-making, judgment, and self-control are still developing, teens may be especially prone to risky behaviors, including trying drugs.

Can drug addiction be cured or prevented?

As with most other chronic diseases, such as diabetes, asthma, or heart disease, treatment for drug addiction generally isn’t a cure. However, addiction is treatable and can be successfully managed. People who are recovering from an addiction will be at risk for relapse for years and possibly for their whole lives. Research shows that combining addiction treatment medicines with behavioral therapy ensures the best chance of success for most patients. Treatment approaches tailored to each patient’s drug use patterns and any co-occurring medical, mental, and social problems can lead to continued recovery.

More good news is that drug use and addiction are preventable. Results from NIDA-funded research have shown that prevention programs involving families, schools, communities, and the media are effective for preventing or reducing drug use and addiction. Although personal events and cultural factors affect drug use trends, when young people view drug use as harmful, they tend to decrease their drug taking. Therefore, education and outreach are key in helping people understand the possible risks of drug use. Teachers, parents, and health care providers have crucial roles in educating young people and preventing drug use and addiction.

Points to Remember

• Drug addiction is a chronic disease characterized by drug seeking and use that is compulsive, or difficult to control, despite harmful consequences.
• Brain changes that occur over time with drug use challenge an addicted person’s self-control and interfere with their ability to resist intense urges to take drugs. This is why drug addiction is also a relapsing disease.
• Relapse is the return to drug use after an attempt to stop. Relapse indicates the need for more or different treatment.
• Most drugs affect the brain's reward circuit by flooding it with the chemical messenger dopamine. Surges of dopamine in the reward circuit cause the reinforcement of pleasurable but unhealthy activities, leading people to repeat the behavior again and again.
• Over time, the brain adjusts to the excess dopamine, which reduces the high that the person feels compared to the high they felt when first taking the drug—an effect known as tolerance. They might take more of the drug, trying to achieve the same dopamine high.
• No single factor can predict whether a person will become addicted to drugs. A combination of genetic, environmental, and developmental factors influences risk for addiction. The more risk factors a person has, the greater the chance that taking drugs can lead to addiction.
• Drug addiction is treatable and can be successfully managed.
• More good news is that drug use and addiction are preventable. Teachers, parents, and health care providers have crucial roles in educating young people and preventing drug use and addiction.

For information about understanding drug use and addiction, visit:

• www.nida.nih.gov/publications/drugs-brains-behavior-science-addiction/drug-abuse-addiction

For more information about the costs of drug abuse to the United States, visit:

• www.nida.nih.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics#costs

For more information about prevention, visit:

• www.nida.nih.gov/related-topics/prevention

For more information about treatment, visit:

• www.nida.nih.gov/related-topics/treatment

To find a publicly funded treatment center in your state, call 1-800-662-HELP or visit:

• https://findtreatment.samhsa.gov/

This publication is available for your use and may be reproduced in its entirety without permission from NIDA. Citation of the source is appreciated, using the following language: Source: National Institute on Drug Abuse; National Institutes of Health; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Articles on Narcotics

Displaying all articles.

Deep-seated inequality is fuelling an escalation of violence across Latin America

Andrew Nickson , University of Birmingham

International drug policy: at a crossroads or a  dead-end ?

Khalid Tinasti , Graduate Institute – Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement (IHEID) and Yong-an Zhang , Shanghai University

‘Gutter water’, ‘monkey tail’ and smoked faeces: new dangers on Nigeria’s drug scene

Emeka Dumbili , Nnamdi Azikiwe University

In Afghanistan, opium is as big a winner as Islamic extremism

Giada Ferrucci , Western University

El Chapo trial shows why a wall won’t stop drugs from crossing the US-Mexico  border

Luis Gómez Romero , University of Wollongong

Dispatches from the morgue: Toxicology tests don’t tell the whole story of the opioid epidemic

Justin Wade Hubbard , Vanderbilt University

An addiction researcher shares 6 strategies to address the opioid epidemic

Nabila El-Bassel , Columbia University

The war on fentanyl, the drug linked to 60 deaths in the UK since 2016

Craig McKenzie , University of Dundee and Niamh Nic Daeid , University of Dundee

Banning kratom won’t stop users or solve the drugs health crisis – so why continue this losing war?

Andres Roman-Urrestarazu , London School of Economics and Political Science

Narco-state or failed state? Guinea-Bissau and the framing of Africa

Keith Somerville , University of Kent

Related Topics

• Drug trafficking
• Opioid addiction series
• Opioid epidemic
• T&F research
• War on Drugs

Top contributors

Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of Wollongong

Director Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science, University of Dundee

Visiting Professor, University of Kent

Research Officer, London School of Economics and Political Science

Senior Lecturer in Forensic Chemistry, University of Dundee

Professor of Social Work, Director of Social Intervention Group, Columbia University

Doctoral Candidate, Medical History, Vanderbilt University

PhD Candidate, Media Studies, Western University

Assistant Professor and Ad Astra Fellow, University College Dublin

Chercheur au Center on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding, Graduate Institute – Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement (IHEID)

Professor of History, Shanghai University

Honorary Reader in the Department of International Development, University of Birmingham

• X (Twitter)
• Unfollow topic Follow topic

Narcotics anonymous: its history, structure, and approach

• PMID: 3912337
• DOI: 10.3109/10826088509047242

Although Narcotics Anonymous (NA) is the oldest and largest self-help group for the support of drug abusers, it has received little study. This paper provides an overview of the history, structure, philosophy, and activities of the NA fellowship based on interviews with members, a survey of the NA literature, and observation at a residential therapeutic community employing the NA approach. The latter data provide a means of analyzing the relationship between NA and those implementing its program. Suggestions for research are advanced in recognition of Narcotics Anonymous as both underground social movement and major treatment modality for drug abusers.

Publication types

• Historical Article
• Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.
• History, 20th Century
• Imitative Behavior
• Opioid-Related Disorders / psychology
• Opioid-Related Disorders / rehabilitation*
• Self-Help Groups* / history
• Self-Help Groups* / organization & administration
• Social Identification
• Therapeutic Community
• United States

Grants and funding

• DA 01070-01/DA/NIDA NIH HHS/United States
• MH 15730/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/United States

Marijuana’s Health Effects Are About to Get a Whole Lot Clearer

Rescheduling weed will clear the way for scientists to study it more directly.

Earlier this week, news leaked of the biggest change in federal drug policy in more than half a century. The Associated Press reported —and the Department of Justice later confirmed —that the Drug Enforcement Administration plans to recategorize marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act. Since the 1970s, it’s been placed in Schedule I, a highly controlled group that includes drugs like heroin, with a high potential for abuse and no medical use. But cannabis will soon be moved to the much less restrictive Schedule III, which includes prescription drugs such as ketamine and Tylenol with codeine that have a moderate-to-low risk of addiction.

Currently, recreational cannabis is legal for adults over the age of 21 in 24 states, which are home to more than half of the U.S. population. According to a recent Harris poll , about 40 percent of Americans use cannabis, and a quarter do so on at least a weekly basis. And yet, researchers and physicians told me, scientific consensus on the drug’s precise effects—especially on the heart and lungs, mental health, and developing adolescent brains—is still lacking. Rescheduling marijuana will broaden access further still, which makes finding better answers to those questions even more crucial.

Conveniently, rescheduling marijuana is also likely to spur in-depth study, in part by expanding research opportunities that were previously limited or nonexistent. Easing restrictions will ultimately mean learning a lot more about the potential harms and benefits of a drug that for decades has been both popular and demonized.

Historically, the scope of cannabis research has been fairly limited. The National Institute on Drug Abuse, a major federal research funder, has a directive to study the harms of cannabis use rather than any potential benefits, says Amanda Reiman, the chief knowledge officer of New Frontier Data. (New Frontier is an analytics firm focused on the legal cannabis industry.) In 2018, research on the potential harms of cannabis use received more than double the funding that research on its medicinal or therapeutic use did in the U.S., U.K., and Canada. In 2020, a spokesperson for NIDA told Science that although the agency’s traditional focus was on marijuana addiction, it has started exploring the therapeutic potential of compounds in cannabis to treat addiction to other substances.

U.S. policy has also made marijuana research of any sort very difficult. Until recently, scientists had to obtain their supply from NIDA’s high-security Mississippi facility. (Six more sources were approved last year.) Researchers regularly complained that the marijuana was moldy, and far from the quality that regular consumers could purchase legally at their local dispensary, with less THC and CBD.

Read: The government’s weed is terrible

Most existing research on how cannabis affects our hearts, our brains, and our society at large is based on self-reported survey data, Peter Grinspoon, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and a medical-cannabis expert, told me. Such data are “notoriously inaccurate,” he said. But researchers have been forced to rely on these methods because cannabis is a Schedule I drug, so no studies that receive federal funding can simply give marijuana from state-approved dispensaries to people and record what happens.

As a result, the field lacks the number of high-quality studies necessary for researchers to agree on their implications, says Nick Cioe, an associate professor at Assumption University in Massachusetts who has studied the effects of marijuana on traumatic brain injuries. Randomized controlled trials are the gold standard of determining a given drug’s harms and benefits, but for weed, they’ve been nearly impossible. The FDA has approved a handful of cannabis-derived products to treat conditions such as seizures and chemotherapy-induced nausea, but that’s not the same as understanding the effects of recreational weed.

After marijuana is officially rescheduled, researchers will have a far easier time studying the drug’s effects. Researching any federally controlled substance is difficult, but obtaining the proper licenses for using Schedule III drugs in the lab is much less arduous than for Schedule I. Scientists will also have far more opportunities to obtain federal grant funding from all sorts of governmental bodies—the National Institutes of Health, the EPA, even the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration—as policy makers rush to understand the implications of legalization.

Human trials won’t start the second that the DEA makes marijuana’s new status official. Researchers will have to wait for guidance from federal agencies like the FDA and the NIH, says R. Lorraine Collins, the director of the University at Buffalo’s Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research. And given the limitations around Schedule III drugs, scientists still won’t be able to simply purchase the same cannabis that millions of Americans are consuming from their local dispensary.

Read: Almost no one is happy with legal weed

Schedule III won’t “magically alleviate the bureaucratic headaches” associated with researching cannabis, Grinspoon said. But “it’s going to be a lot easier to say, ‘Let’s give this person cannabis and see what happens to their blood pressure.’”

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

• Your Health
• Treatments & Tests
• Health Inc.
• Public Health

In a decade of drug overdoses, more than 320,000 American children lost a parent

Rhitu Chatterjee

Esther Nesbitt lost two of her children to drug overdoses, and her grandchildren are among more than 320,000 who lost parents in the overdose epidemic. Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images hide caption

Esther Nesbitt lost two of her children to drug overdoses, and her grandchildren are among more than 320,000 who lost parents in the overdose epidemic.

More than 320,000 children across the United States lost a parent due to a drug overdose between 2011 and 2021. That's according to a new study published in JAMA Psychiatry Wednesday.

"It's a call to arms to pay close attention to the consequences of a parent who dies due to a drug overdose," saysHarvard neuroscientist Charles Nelson III , who wasn't involved in the new study.

The impact of the country's overdose epidemic on children is something "we really don't speak much about," says Dr. Nora Volkow , director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and an author of the new study.

"The [overdose] numbers and mortality are so high that it attracts all of the attention and urgency to address it, to protect people from dying," she adds. "But at the same time, we've basically neglected to realize that when someone dies, there is a family that's left behind. And if the family has young children, that makes them very, very vulnerable."

Several federal agencies including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health administration and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted the study.

Kids who experience the death of a parent or a primary caregiver are at risk of a range of poor health and educational outcomes, according to previous research.

For example, the death of a parent makes children more likely to do poorly at school and even drop out . A 2018 study found that children who experienced the sudden death of a parent are more likely to have trouble functioning and have symptoms of depression and post traumatic stress disorder.

The new paper was inspired by recent studies on estimates of children who lost a parent or primary caregiver to Covid-19 , says Volkow, drawing attention to the multigenerational effects of the pandemic.

Volkow and her co-authors found that the rate of children who lost a parent from an overdose rose by 134% during the study period – from 27 per 100,000 children in 2011 to 63 per 100,000 in 2021.

More children — over 192,000 — lost a father to drug overdose compared to the 129,000 who lost a mother.

More than half of these bereaved kids had parents who died between the ages of 26 to 40 years, followed by 41 to 64 years, and 18 to 25 years.

The largest number of parents who died were non-Hispanic White, followed by Hispanic and Black. However, the highest rate of parental drug overdose losses were among American Indian and Alaska Native children.

"Children that come from underrepresented groups with higher adversity, economic and social, which already puts them at higher risk for behavioral health disorders and mental health disorders," says Volkow. Those risks can be further exacerbated by the death of a parent due to overdose, she adds.

"When I read the [new] paper, I had this sense of déja vu," says Nelson, who is an author of a 2021 study that estimated the number of children in the United States who lost a parent due to COVID-19-related causes.

However, the long term risks may be even greater for kids who lost a parent due to a drug overdose, says Nelson.

A memorial for those lost to the opioid epidemic in Binghamton, NY, in Aug. 2021. A study in JAMA Psychiatry Wednesday tallies how many children lost parents to overdoses. Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images hide caption

A memorial for those lost to the opioid epidemic in Binghamton, NY, in Aug. 2021. A study in JAMA Psychiatry Wednesday tallies how many children lost parents to overdoses.

"There's so many factors involved so that kids could get very, very tangled up in their thinking about why their parent overdosed," says Nelson.

For example, a child might get preoccupied with questions like "Was it preventable? Why did my father do this? Why didn't they stop taking drugs?" he says.

Besides, as the study points out, growing up in a household where a parent uses substances is itself a childhood trauma with potential for long-term health consequences for a child. "There's all the neglect that goes along with that, with certain substances. That's very common," says Nelson. "There is the abuse that sometimes travels with that."

As a result, a child whose parent died from a drug overdose may experience complex grief, and need more specialized mental health care, he adds.

There are other factors adding more stress to the lives of these bereaved children, says Nelson. "The worst of it is the stigma associated with having lost a parent to an overdose," he says. "So that would mean that these kids could be stigmatized in school."

Then there is the risk of future substance use. "As these kids get to adolescence, they too might start using drugs," says Nelson. "It gets really complicated."

Volkow hopes the study will spur actions to better address the needs of these children, so their long-term risks can be minimized. For example, she hopes there will be efforts made to keep children with their siblings and/or other relatives, with families receiving the supports and services they need to address these children's mental health needs.

"If a child loses a parent, [and] the child welfare system comes in and they remove them and take them away from other siblings, and then they lose not just the parent, they lose the sibling, they lose the school system that they have," says Volkow.

And there is a lot more to be done to prevent the death of parents due to overdoses in the first place, says Volkow, through policies that encourage parents to seek treatment for their substance use.

However, parents, especially mothers (and pregnant women) face tremendous stigma and punitive state laws which discourage them from seeking treatment, she says.

'As a physician, if someone comes to me and they are actually taking drugs and say they are pregnant, I have to report that," Volkow says.

In some states, such reporting eventually leads to the child being taken away from the mother soon after birth. Laws like these discourage women from seeking treatment for substance use, she adds. "Seeking treatment should not be something that people should be afraid of."

• opioid addiciton
• opioid crisis
• children grief

POV: Decision to Reclassify Marijuana as a Less Dangerous Drug Is Long Overdue

Photo by Thought Catalog/Unsplash

Move signals a new opportunity for scientific research and economic opportunities, but quest i ons remain

Seth blumenthal.

In 1971, when asked about psychiatric professionals’ support for cannabis’ therapeutic applications and benefits, President Richard Nixon complained, “Most people would do a hell of a lot better with a preacher than a psychiatrist.” For Nixon, removing science from the cannabis discussion and elevating morality and virtue moved the conversation into his long-standing concern with youth’s ever-growing permissiveness.

However, cannabis science seems to be making a comeback. In a widely anticipated, but still controversial announcement, the Biden administration indicated that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) will move cannabis out of its Schedule I narcotic classification—grouped with the most dangerous drugs, such as heroin, that the DEA deems highly addictive and of little or no medicinal value. With cannabis a Schedule III substance, businesses will now be allowed to invest in the industry with tax relief and researchers will have an opportunity to investigate cannabis without the draconian restrictions on funding in place since 1971.

While many cannabis legalization activists argue that the move does little to address the historical wrongs of the war on drugs and fails to end federal marijuana prohibition, it is important to note this foundational shift away from the moralistic and criminalized framing perpetuated over the last 50 years since Nixon ensured this outdated scheduling classification.

When Nixon announced the war on drugs and his signature contribution in 1971, the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), narcotics enforcement in America suffered from a fragmented patchwork of policies that begged for federal standards across state lines and provoked a controversy about where cannabis stood in relation to other “street drugs.” Marijuana, the symbolic drug of the counterculture, quickly became a political football in the increasingly heated dialogue surrounding the generation gap. Hoping to diffuse this tension, Nixon appointed Governor Raymond P. Shafer (R-Pa.), a former prosecutor, as head of the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse to develop guidelines for prevention and law enforcement as well as scheduling recommendations.

The Shafer Commission conducted the most extensive and comprehensive examination of marijuana ever performed by the US government. They recorded thousands of pages of transcripts of formal and informal hearings, solicited all points of view, including those of public officials, community leaders, professional experts, and students. They also organized a nationwide survey of public beliefs, information, and experience with drugs. In addition, they conducted separate surveys of opinion among district attorneys, judges, probation officers, clinicians, university health officials, and “free clinic” personnel. In total, they commissioned more than 50 projects to survey enforcement of the marijuana laws in six metropolitan jurisdictions.

Nixon found himself in the awkward position of opposing his own study as the report claimed that marijuana did not cause hallucinations and that there was no evidence pot itself caused “crime, sexual immorality or addiction to hard drugs.” The commission recommended that private use be legalized, but further suggested that Nixon should remove drug classification from the DEA purview to allow cannabis rescheduling. As Congressman James Scheuer (D-N.Y.) observed, the commission’s recommendation to decriminalize marijuana represented a “great step forward in regaining the credibility of the youth in our country.”

Nixon disagreed. A week before the report came out, the president announced he would never decriminalize cannabis no matter the study’s findings. “I don’t want psychiatrists,” Nixon grumbled, “I want to smash the dope peddlers.” Thus, Nixon maintained an enforcement- and supply side–focus on cannabis policy that exaggerated prohibition’s moral righteousness, dismissed the scientific evidence, and maintained the DEA’s control over scheduling, which stifled researchers’ efforts to understand this widely used substance.

While efforts to persuade the DEA to reschedule cannabis failed several times, this imminent correction raises a new controversy. Even cannabis activists question the impact this new policy will have on enticing “Big Pharma” and corporate investment, often at odds with the public health research that rescheduling allows and threatening the struggling effort in each state to foster economic and racial equity in the industry. While the opening of both research and economic opportunities reflect a shared effort to bring cannabis science out of the morality framing Nixon preferred, Biden’s efforts shift the question from “whether” we should reschedule to “how.”

Seth Blumenthal, a master lecturer in the College of Arts & Sciences Writing Program, can be reached at [email protected] .

“POV” is an opinion page that provides timely commentaries from students, faculty, and staff on a variety of issues: on-campus, local, state, national, or international. Anyone interested in submitting a piece, which should be about 700 words long, should contact John O’Rourke at [email protected]. BU Today reserves the right to reject or edit submissions. The views expressed are solely those of the author and are not intended to represent the views of Boston University.

Explore Related Topics:

• Government & Law
• Share this story
• 0 Comments Add

Seth Blumenthal Profile

Comments & Discussion

Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

Post a comment. Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Latest from BU Today

Kahn award will carry theater arts major madeline riddick-seals back to alabama, commencement 2024: what you need to know, esl classes offered to bu dining services workers, sargent senior gives back to his native nairobi—through sports, providing better support to disabled survivors of sexual assault, class of 2024: songs that remind you of your last four years at boston university, cloud computing platform cloudweaver wins at spring 2024 spark demo day, a birder’s guide to boston university, boston teens pitch biotech concepts to bu “investors” at biological design center’s stem pathways event, the weekender: may 9 to 12, dean sandro galea leaving bu’s school of public health for washu opportunity, meet the 2024 john s. perkins award winners, comm ave runway: may edition, stitching together the past, two bu faculty honored with outstanding teaching awards, advice to the class of 2024: “say thank you”, school of visual arts annual bfa thesis exhibitions celebrate works by 33 bfa seniors, killers of the flower moon author, and bu alum, david grann will be bu’s 151st commencement speaker, photos of the month: a look back at april at bu.

• Election 2024
• Entertainment
• Newsletters
• Photography
• Personal Finance
• AP Investigations
• AP Buyline Personal Finance
• AP Buyline Shopping
• Press Releases
• Israel-Hamas War
• Russia-Ukraine War
• Global elections
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East
• Election Results
• Delegate Tracker
• AP & Elections
• Auto Racing
• 2024 Paris Olympic Games
• Movie reviews
• Book reviews
• Personal finance
• Financial Markets
• Business Highlights
• Financial wellness
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Media

What marijuana reclassification means for the United States

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will move to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, a historic shift to generations of American drug policy that could have wide ripple effects across the country.

FILE - Marijuana plants are seen at a secured growing facility in Washington County, N.Y., May 12, 2023. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will move to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, a historic shift to generations of American drug policy that could have wide ripple effects across the country. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink, File)

• Copy Link copied

Budtender Rey Cruz weighs cannabis for a customer at the Marijuana Paradise on Friday, April 19, 2024, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

Cloud 9 Cannabis employee Beau McQueen, right, helps a customer, Saturday, April 13, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. The shop is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is moving toward reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug. The Justice Department proposal would recognize the medical uses of cannabis , but wouldn’t legalize it for recreational use.

The proposal would move marijuana from the “Schedule I” group to the less tightly regulated “Schedule III.”

So what does that mean, and what are the implications?

WHAT HAS ACTUALLY CHANGED? WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Technically, nothing yet. The proposal must be reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, and then undergo a public-comment period and review from an administrative judge, a potentially lengthy process.

Still, the switch is considered “paradigm-shifting, and it’s very exciting,” Vince Sliwoski, a Portland, Oregon-based cannabis and psychedelics attorney who runs well-known legal blogs on those topics, told The Associated Press when the federal Health and Human Services Department recommended the change.

“I can’t emphasize enough how big of news it is,” he said.

It came after President Joe Biden asked both HHS and the attorney general, who oversees the DEA, last year to review how marijuana was classified. Schedule I put it on par, legally, with heroin, LSD, quaaludes and ecstasy, among others.

Biden, a Democrat, supports legalizing medical marijuana for use “where appropriate, consistent with medical and scientific evidence,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday. “That is why it is important for this independent review to go through.”

Cloud 9 Cannabis employee Beau McQueen, right, helps a customer, Saturday, April 13, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

IF MARIJUANA GETS RECLASSIFIED, WOULD IT LEGALIZE RECREATIONAL CANNABIS NATIONWIDE?

Ap audio: what marijuana reclassification means for the united states.

AP correspondent Haya Panjwani reports on a proposal for the federal government to reclassify marijuana in what would be a historic shift that could have wide ripple effects across the country.

No. Schedule III drugs — which include ketamine, anabolic steroids and some acetaminophen-codeine combinations — are still controlled substances.

They’re subject to various rules that allow for some medical uses, and for federal criminal prosecution of anyone who traffics in the drugs without permission.

No changes are expected to the medical marijuana programs now licensed in 38 states or the legal recreational cannabis markets in 23 states, but it’s unlikely they would meet the federal production, record-keeping, prescribing and other requirements for Schedule III drugs.

There haven’t been many federal prosecutions for simply possessing marijuana in recent years, even under marijuana’s current Schedule I status, but the reclassification wouldn’t have an immediate impact on people already in the criminal justice system.

“Put simple, this move from Schedule I to Schedule III is not getting people out of jail,” said David Culver, senior vice president of public affairs at the U.S. Cannabis Council.

But rescheduling in itself would have some impact, particularly on research and marijuana business taxes.

WHAT WOULD THIS MEAN FOR RESEARCH?

Because marijuana is on Schedule I, it’s been very difficult to conduct authorized clinical studies that involve administering the drug. That has created something of a Catch-22: calls for more research, but barriers to doing it. (Scientists sometimes rely instead on people’s own reports of their marijuana use.)

Marijuana plants are seen at a secured growing facility in Washington County, N.Y., May 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink, File)

Schedule III drugs are easier to study, though the reclassification wouldn’t immediately reverse all barriers to study.

“It’s going to be really confusing for a long time,” said Ziva Cooper, director of the University of California, Los Angeles Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoids. “When the dust has settled, I don’t know how many years from now, research will be easier.”

Among the unknowns: whether researchers will be able to study marijuana from state-licensed dispensaries and how the federal Food and Drug Administration might oversee that.

Some researchers are optimistic.

“Reducing the schedule to schedule 3 will open up the door for us to be able to conduct research with human subjects with cannabis,” said Susan Ferguson, director of University of Washington’s Addictions, Drug & Alcohol Institute in Seattle.

WHAT ABOUT TAXES (AND BANKING)?

Under the federal tax code, businesses involved in “trafficking” in marijuana or any other Schedule I or II drug can’t deduct rent, payroll or various other expenses that other businesses can write off. (Yes, at least some cannabis businesses, particularly state-licensed ones, do pay taxes to the federal government, despite its prohibition on marijuana.) Industry groups say the tax rate often ends up at 70% or more.

The deduction rule doesn’t apply to Schedule III drugs, so the proposed change would cut cannabis companies’ taxes substantially.

They say it would treat them like other industries and help them compete against illegal competitors that are frustrating licensees and officials in places such as New York .

“You’re going to make these state-legal programs stronger,” says Adam Goers, of The Cannabist Company, formerly Columbia Care. He co-chairs a coalition of corporate and other players that’s pushing for rescheduling.

It could also mean more cannabis promotion and advertising if those costs could be deducted, according to Beau Kilmer, co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Center.

Rescheduling wouldn’t directly affect another marijuana business problem: difficulty accessing banks, particularly for loans, because the federally regulated institutions are wary of the drug’s legal status. The industry has been looking instead to a measure called the SAFE Banking Act . It has repeatedly passed the House but stalled in the Senate.

ARE THERE CRITICS? WHAT DO THEY SAY?

Indeed, there are, including the national anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana. President Kevin Sabet, a former Obama administration drug policy official, said the HHS recommendation “flies in the face of science, reeks of politics” and gives a regrettable nod to an industry “desperately looking for legitimacy.”

Some legalization advocates say rescheduling weed is too incremental. They want to keep the focus on removing it completely from the controlled substances list, which doesn’t include such items as alcohol or tobacco (they’re regulated, but that’s not the same).

Paul Armentano, the deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said that simply reclassifying marijuana would be “perpetuating the existing divide between state and federal marijuana policies.” Kaliko Castille, a past president of the Minority Cannabis Business Association, said rescheduling just “re-brands prohibition,” rather than giving an all-clear to state licensees and putting a definitive close to decades of arrests that disproportionately pulled in people of color.

“Schedule III is going to leave it in this kind of amorphous, mucky middle where people are not going to understand the danger of it still being federally illegal,” he said.

This story has been corrected to show that Kaliko Castille is a past president, not president, of the Minority Cannabis Business Association and that Columbia Care is now The Cannabist Company.

___ Peltz reported from New York. Associated Press writers Colleen Long in Washington and Carla K. Johnson in Seattle contributed to this report.

FDA panel to consider MDMA for PTSD treatment

The Food and Drug Administration's panel of independent advisers will on June 4 deliberate whether they should recommend approval for the first MDMA-assisted therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, Lykos Therapeutics said on Monday.

This would be the first FDA panel of outside experts to review a potential new PTSD treatment in 25 years.

PTSD is a disorder caused by very stressful events and can significantly disrupt patients’ lives.

Decades of studies has shown that psychoactive ingredients, whether derived from cannabis, LSD or magic mushrooms, have long captivated mental health researchers in their quest for treatments.

In support of its application, Lykos Therapeutics, formerly known as Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), studied the party drug MDMA, more commonly called ecstacy or molly, in two late-stage studies.

More news on psychedelic research

• More high school students report using Delta-8 THC, also known as "weed lite."
• Effects of psychedelic drugs can last for days or weeks.
• High-potency marijuana highlights the risk of cannabis-induced psychiatric disorders.

The drug is intended to be used in combination with psychological intervention, which includes psychotherapy, or talk therapy, and other supportive services provided by a qualified healthcare provider.

No psychedelic-based therapy has been approved yet in the U.S., but MAPS and companies such as Compass Pathways are testing such drugs to find cures for a range of mental health disorders.

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• 01 May 2024

Found: the dial in the brain that controls the immune system

• Giorgia Guglielmi 0

Giorgia Guglielmi is a science journalist in Basel, Switzerland.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

A population of neurons in the brain stem, the stalk-like structure that connects the bulk of the brain to the spinal cord, acts as the master dial for the immune system. Credit: Voisin/Phanie/Science Photo Library

Scientists have long known that the brain plays a part in the immune system — but how it does so has been a mystery. Now, scientists have identified cells in the brainstem that sense immune cues from the periphery of the body and act as master regulators of the body’s inflammatory response .

The results, published on 1 May in Nature 1 , suggest that the brain maintains a delicate balance between the molecular signals that promote inflammation and those that dampen it — a finding that could lead to treatments for autoimmune diseases and other conditions caused by an excessive immune response.

The discovery is akin to a black-swan event — unexpected but making perfect sense once revealed, says Ruslan Medzhitov, an immunologist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Scientists have known that the brainstem has many functions, such as controlling basic processes such as breathing. However, he adds, the study “shows that there is whole layer of biology that we haven’t even anticipated”.

The brain is watching

After sensing an intruder, the immune system unleashes a flood of immune cells and compounds that promote inflammation. This inflammatory response must be controlled with exquisite precision: if it’s too weak, the body is at greater risk of becoming infected; if it’s too strong, it can damage the body’s own tissues and organs.

Previous work has shown that the vagus nerve, a large network of nerve fibres that links the body with the brain, influences immune responses. However, the specific brain neurons that are activated by immune stimuli remained elusive, says Hao Jin, a neuroimmunologist at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, who led the work.

To investigate how the brain controls the body’s immune response, Jin and his colleagues monitored the activity of brain cells after injecting the abdomen of mice with bacterial compounds that trigger inflammation.

How the brain senses a flu infection — and orders the body to rest

The researchers identified neurons in the brainstem that switched on in response to the immune triggers. Activating these neurons with a drug reduced the levels of inflammatory molecules in the mice’s blood. Silencing the neurons led to an uncontrolled immune response, with the number of inflammatory molecules increasing by 300% compared with the levels observed in mice with functional brainstem neurons. These nerve cells act as “a rheostat in the brain that ensures that an inflammatory response is maintained within the appropriate levels”, says study co-author Charles Zuker, a neuroscientist at Columbia University in New York City.

Further experiments revealed two discrete groups of neurons in the vagus nerve : one that responds to pro-inflammatory immune molecules and another that responds to anti-inflammatory molecules. These neurons relay their signals to the brain, allowing it to monitor the immune response as it unfolds. In mice with conditions characterized by an excessive immune response, artificially activating the vagal neurons that carry anti-inflammatory signals diminished inflammation.

Dampening autoimmune symptoms

Finding ways to control this newly discovered body–brain network would offer an approach to fixing broken immune responses in various conditions such as autoimmune diseases and even long COVID , a debilitating syndrome that can persist for years after a SARS-CoV-2 infection, Jin says.

Cracking the genetic code of autoimmune disease

There’s evidence that therapies targeting the vagus nerve can treat diseases such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis, suggesting that targeting the specific vagal neurons that carry immune signals might work in people, Zuker says. But, he cautions, “it’s a lot of work to go from here to there”.

Besides the neuronal network identified in the study, there might be other routes through which the body transmits immune signals to the brain, says Stephen Liberles, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. What’s more, the mechanisms by which the brain sends signals back to the immune system to regulate inflammation remain unclear. “We’re just scratching the surface,” he says. “We need to understand the rule book of how the brain and the immune system interact.”

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01259-2

Jin, H., Li, M., Jeong, E., Castro-Martinez, F. & Zuker, C. S. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07469-y (2024).

Article   Google Scholar  

Download references

Reprints and permissions

Related Articles

• Neuroscience

Cubic millimetre of brain mapped in spectacular detail

News 09 MAY 24

Rat neurons repair mouse brains — and restore sense of smell

News 25 APR 24

Mini-colon and brain ‘organoids’ shed light on cancer and other diseases

News 24 APR 24

Vaccine-enhancing plant extract could be mass produced in yeast

News & Views 08 MAY 24

Bird flu in US cows: where will it end?

News 08 MAY 24

Hacking the immune system could slow ageing — here’s how

News Feature 07 MAY 24

Retuning of hippocampal representations during sleep

Article 08 MAY 24

Structural pharmacology and therapeutic potential of 5-methoxytryptamines

Southeast University Future Technology Institute Recruitment Notice

Professor openings in mechanical engineering, control science and engineering, and integrating emerging interdisciplinary majors

Nanjing, Jiangsu (CN)

Southeast University

Staff Scientist

A Staff Scientist position is available in the laboratory of Drs. Elliot and Glassberg to study translational aspects of lung injury, repair and fibro

Maywood, Illinois

Loyola University Chicago - Department of Medicine

W3-Professorship (with tenure) in Inorganic Chemistry

The Institute of Inorganic Chemistry in the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Bonn invites applications for a W3-Pro...

53113, Zentrum (DE)

Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität

Principal Investigator Positions at the Chinese Institutes for Medical Research, Beijing

Studies of mechanisms of human diseases, drug discovery, biomedical engineering, public health and relevant interdisciplinary fields.

Beijing, China

The Chinese Institutes for Medical Research (CIMR), Beijing

Research Associate - Neural Development Disorders

Houston, Texas (US)

Baylor College of Medicine (BCM)

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

We've detected unusual activity from your computer network

To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot.

Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy .

For inquiries related to this message please contact our support team and provide the reference ID below.

Bill could end holdup for California research on psychedelics and addiction treatment

• Show more sharing options
• Copy Link URL Copied!

California lawmakers could soon clear a governmental logjam that has held up dozens of studies related to addiction treatment, psychedelics or other federally restricted drugs.

The holdup revolves around the Research Advisory Panel of California , established decades ago to vet studies involving cannabis, hallucinogens and treatments for “abuse of controlled substances.”

It has been a critical hurdle for California researchers exploring possible uses of psychedelics or seeking new ways to combat addiction. Scientists cannot move forward with such research projects without the panel’s blessing.

The panel had long met behind closed doors to make its decisions, but concerns arose last year that it was supposed to fall under the Bagley-Keene Act, a state law requiring open meetings. Holding those meetings in public, however, raised alarm about exposing trade secrets and other sensitive information.

So the panel stopped meeting at all. It has not convened since August. Meetings ordinarily scheduled for every other month have been canceled since October.

The result has been a ballooning backlog: As of early May, there were 42 new studies and 28 amendments to existing projects awaiting approval, according to state officials.

Kratom products have gone unregulated in California, unnerving both fans and critics

In California, where the herbal substance kratom has become a common fixture in vape-and-smoke shops, lawmakers are now aiming to reel in an unregulated market.

April 29, 2024

Ziva Cooper, director of the UCLA Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoids, said she had submitted one study to the California panel over a year ago — one already approved by the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and an institutional review board. That research will assess the health risks of cannabis for seniors and young adults ages 18 to 25, two groups whose cannabis use has been on the rise, she said. Cooper said the panel sought a small change: adjusting two words in a consent form for study participants. But because the panel has not been meeting, she has been unable to proceed.

The holdup has also snarled two other studies her UCLA center had submitted to the panel — one examining whether cannabis could be used as an alternative to opioids for pain relief, another on whether a psychedelic compound found in mushrooms, psilocybin, could help treat people struggling with cocaine addiction.

And Cooper said she hasn’t even bothered to submit three more studies, including research on the effects of high-potency cannabis. The holdup has left Cooper and other researchers fearing they could lose funding for planned studies or be forced to lay off staff.

The idea of having to study something different because “in California I can’t do the research that I’m trained to do ... is demoralizing,” Cooper said. It aggravates her “to not be able to answer the questions that are desperately needed right now” as the range of cannabis products on the market has grown.

The standstill “has broad implications, costing researchers money in expired grants and contingent grants, shortened patents on new drugs, lost wages for research personnel, lost talent, and lost costs of research drugs for human use that will expire before use,” according to an analysis prepared for a state committee.

That long hiatus could soon end: Under Assembly Bill 2841, the state panel would be able to hold closed sessions to discuss studies that involve trade secrets or other proprietary information. The bill, proposed by Assemblymember Marie Waldron (R-Valley Center), would go into effect immediately if signed by the governor.

“We are focused on reactivating the large amount of research studies that have been on hold for over a year now,” Waldron said in a statement. “This is the quick and urgent solution needed to address that problem.”

How L.A. County is trying to remake addiction treatment — no more ‘business as usual’

A Los Angeles County initiative called Reaching the 95% aims to engage with more people than the fraction of Angelenos already getting addiction treatment.

April 23, 2024

The bill is supported by the nonprofit Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions, which supports research into the possible benefits of psychedelics for treating depression and other conditions among military veterans and helps them obtain such treatment abroad.

“Psychedelic research has ground to halt in California — including numerous VA studies, “ said its director of public policy, Khurshid Khoja. If the Legislature does not act swiftly, the state will see “a rapid exodus of skilled researchers from California universities and research institutions to pursue their critically important work elsewhere — not to mention capital flight by funders who’ll deploy research dollars outside the state.”

“AB 2841 is an urgently needed response to address this crisis,” Khoja said.

To many researchers, however, AB 2841 does not go far enough. Dozens of scientists have called for the panel to be eliminated, arguing that even when it was meeting regularly, it was an unnecessary obstruction to research already being scrutinized by other government and institutional reviewers.

In a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom, a coalition of researchers argued that undergoing the state review could delay a study by at least five months, resulting in more than $100,000 in “unnecessary staff expenditures” in that time. Because other states don’t have that hurdle, they argued, California researchers are losing out on competitive funding — and Californians miss chances to participate in local trials for emerging treatments.

The longest, strangest trip: Some psychedelic drug users are stuck with unwelcome highs

A rare condition called hallucinogen persisting perception disorder has puzzled researchers and raised alarms as psychedelics go mainstream.

April 30, 2024

UCLA psychologist and addiction researcher Steven Shoptaw called it “an unequal burden on addiction research” compared with other scientific studies.

The California panel has been vetting not only studies that involve federally restricted drugs, but also those assessing any kind of medication to treat addiction, said Dr. Phillip Coffin, a UC San Francisco professor of medicine who has called to eliminate the panel.

“If I’m testing Prozac for depression, or Prozac for any other disease, I can do my research without waiting” for the committee, he said, but “If I’m testing Prozac for addiction, I have to wait.” By maintaining such barriers, Coffin argued, “we are seriously harming any chance California has of responding to the addiction crisis.”

Short of eliminating the panel, some have also argued for amending the law to exempt any researchers who have gotten federal approval to do such research.

Others have argued that the panel has a valuable role, even for studies that have undergone review by the FDA or other entities. An analysis of AB 2841 prepared for the Assembly Committee on Health said state data from the Department of Justice show that the Research Advisory Panel regularly catches issues with drug safety, consent forms missing important information about safety and privacy, and other potential problems.

The panel “has a record of providing an extra level of protection, which is important given the volume of controlled substance research that occurs in California,” the analysis said. In addition, the committee analysis said the panel is “the only one which ensures that studies conducted in California comply with state law.”

Coffin disputed such arguments, saying that in his experience and that of many other researchers, its feedback had not “improved patient safety or remotely justified the extreme delays.”

If it is truly finding problems that have escaped other reviewers, he argued, “then all research — not just addiction treatment and controlled substances — should be forced to go through this panel.”

DEA’s big marijuana shift could be a lifeline for California’s troubled pot industry

How will the DEA’s decision to reclassify marijuana affect California’s ailing pot industry?

May 1, 2024

More to Read

Editorial: Biden’s plan to reschedule marijuana may finally end ‘Reefer Madness’

May 10, 2024

Editorial: Reclassifying marijuana is not decriminalization, but is a welcome step in that direction

Do dying people have a ‘right to try’ magic mushrooms? 9th Circuit weighs case

Emily Alpert Reyes covers public health for the Los Angeles Times.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Biden raises millions in the Bay Area as he says his campaign is underestimated

L.A. prosecutors say recording of racist City Hall conversation was a crime but refer case to the city attorney

What to know about Gov. Newsom’s plan to offset California’s $45-billion deficit

Jewish families say anti-Israel messaging in Bay Area classrooms is making schools unsafe