DRUG POLICY CHIEF LOOKS TO THE ROOT OF ADDICTION

US Eyes 10% Reduction In Abuse In Two Years

White House drug policy director John P. Walters called on scientists
yesterday to develop new tools for diagnosing and treating drug addiction,
saying that major advances in genetics and neuroscience could help devise
medicines that attack the root causes of substance abuse.

Speaking at a substance abuse conference in Cambridge, Walters, director of
the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said science must play a key
role in meeting President Bush's goal of a 10 percent reduction in drug
abuse within two years and a 25 percent cut over five years.

He said the administration has doubled federal spending on drug abuse
research to $933 million, financing work at 10 locations nationwide,
including at Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Hospital in Belmont.

''Drug addiction is a disease of the brain,'' said Walters. He challenged
geneticists, neuroscientists, and magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI,
specialists to work cooperatively to find a better understanding of addiction.

''Substance abuse is an important issue that warrants the determined
efforts of America's top scientists,'' he said.

Rapid improvement in brain-imaging technologies such as MRIs is helping to
change the understanding of basic human drives such as motivation and
satisfaction from merely an attitude to behavior ruled by brain circuitry
and genetics.

Current treatment for drug abuse is scattershot, based on symptoms and the
drug of choice, rather than a full understanding of the brain's wiring that
determines an addict's motivation for abuse, said Dr. David Gastfriend,
director of addiction services and a psychiatric researcher at Mass. General.

''We don't have specific medicines and therapies to target the different
kinds of addicts, even those with the same drug of abuse,'' he said.

Treatment should focus on the part of the brain that regulates the
addiction, which can vary person by person even for the same kind of addiction.

''The brain doesn't lie,'' said Dr. Hans Breiter, psychiatric researcher at
Mass. General, whose team just received a $7 million high resolution brain
scanner that will be used to study the brain activity of 3,000 cocaine and
nicotine addicts as well as people suffering from depression.

In their research, scientists at Mass. General will study abnormal brain
images, which are drastically different from those of nonaddicted
individuals. By comparing these different brain patterns, or phenotypes,
Breiter will research how the brain's activities are affected by addiction
and outline the ways in which a predisposition for addiction can be
genetically inherited. Once the genetic code for addiction is identified,
researchers hope to develop a drug treatment for the part of the brain that
controls addiction.