WORLD NEWS: THE AMERICAS: Dope wars: brain may hold key to addiction:
Researchers are working on the theory that addiction is genetic and are
hoping to find a marker that would identify those who are more susceptible
to drug abuse and thus could be helped much sooner: Part IV: Can Science
Win The Drugs War?

PART IV: CAN SCIENCE WIN THE DRUGS WAR?

Lynn Zimmer has tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to calculate exactly how many
plastic vials of urine are airborne at any given moment en route to
laboratories.

Drug testing is a growth business in the US. According to one study, about
half of all American workers under the age of 49 were tested for drug use
by their employers in 1997, as companies enthusiastically joined America's
war on drugs.

Ms Zimmer, a Queens College, New York, sociologist who has studied the drug
war for the last 10 years, says many companies - including courier
services, test tube makers and airlines - now have stakes in the battle to
eviscerate drug use.

Science, also, is benefiting from federal funding. Researchers are studying
the impact of drug use on the human body, the characteristics of users, and
medicines to free addicts from their habits.

Many scientists believe the key to understanding drug addiction is to be
found in the human brain. The National Institute on Drug Abuse, which
supervises the science front of the drug war, says 25 years of research has
brought the agency to the cusp of new discoveries for causes, prevention
and treatment of drug addiction.

Research has yielded an understanding of molecular details of every abused
drug and the action they exert on the body. Nida is receiving Dollars 690m
in federal funding this year. It will award 12,000 research grants and fund
a clinical trials network to determine which methods work best in treatment
centres.

Nida is not immune from criticism. "Nida never does a sober cost/benefit
analysis of the drug war itself," said James Bovard, author of a new book,
Feeling Your Pain, which dissects many of the drug programmes.

Another critic is Marsha Rosenbaum, a former Nida researcher, now San
Francisco director of Lindesmith Centre-Drug Policy Foundation, which
opposes US drug policies. "We knew everything we needed to know about
methadone," she says of the drug that is given to addicts in place of
heroin. "But they kept funding studies anyway."

Agency officials believe that soon they will prove a theory which treatment
specialists have held for years: that addiction - or vulnerability to
addiction - is genetic. Researchers hope to discover biological markers
that would identify those who are more susceptible to drug abuse.

Research discoveries are then used to develop new drugs that they hope will
quench the desire for damaging and addictive illegal substances.

"We started doing medication development 10 years ago when it was clear
that the pharmaceutical industry wasn't interested in doing it," says Dr
Tim Condon, Nida associate director. "There is a stigma associated with
addiction and the attitude that 'They did this to themselves'."

However, pharmaceutical cures rather than abstinence to kick the habit are
controversial among many treatment providers, such as Michael Guiro, of a
Phoenix House programme in New York.

"The best way to go in the long run is a drug-free approach," he says.

But the drug policy office in the White House has already concluded that
drug use to combat drug addiction, is acceptable.

"It should be approached like other chronic illnesses - such as diabetes
and hypertension," the office said in its 2000 annual report.

In a Nida brain-imaging centre in Baltimore, researchers are studying human
and monkey brains to learn where drugs act, the neurotransmitter systems
with which they act and the timing of the distribution of drugs in the body.

"We are also studying how the brains of drug abusers act differently from
nonabusers," Dr Alaine Kines says.

She says some scientists think that drug abusers have "a problem" with the
orbital frontal cortex in the underside of the brain.

Ms Zimmer is less than impressed with the brain research. "I don't think it
tells us much, nor is it clear what these pictures mean. They are bright
and dramatic, but I don't think they answer the question of why some people
take too many drugs and why some don't.

"What if it can be determined who is likely to become an addict? I worry
about the interventions that they will do. How do we know for sure if they
are any good?"

Nida has also set aside Dollars 54m for research on "party drugs",
particularly ecstasy, for which demand is surging among young people.

The science agency has already concluded that heavy ecstasy use could lead
to impairment in other cognitive functions, such as the ability to reason
verbally.

But the research is preliminary, Ms Rosenbaum says, and the "exaggeration
and hysteria" of the message just justifies more crackdowns and seizures by
police.

This, she worries, may bring on to the market look-alike drugs that are far
more dangerous.

The warnings are not frightening to millions of young people taking the
drug, Ms Zimmer says. "They are not dropping like flies. They're having fun."

It is difficult to bet against science, which has brought miracle cures for
diseases all over the world. However critics charge that a silver-bullet
cure is too easy and too close to taking drugs in the first place.

If the scientists have it right, a pill could conquer the drug plague, and
all the billions of dollars spent each year on military hardware, aerial
spraying, imprisonment and even treatment could some day be saved.
Drug-dependent businesses would go the way of the buggy whip. But it is not
likely to happen soon. This is the last of a four-part series. All the
articles can be seen at www.ft.com