Sidebar: DISCUSSING THE SCIENCE BEHIND DRUG ADDICTION
"This institute intramurally and extramurally provides 85 percent of the world support for research on drug abuse and addiction," remarks Alan I. Leshner, NIDA's director. "Our 1995 total budget for all of that is $437 million." While stressing that the figure is not large, he acknowledges that "that's not a bad budget by general NIH standards": Seven out of the 17 institutes have larger budgets. According to the 1995 budget report of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), $1.2 billion was spent by the united States government on preventing drug abuse.
NIDA Researcher George Uhl and his colleagues look at drug addiction from the molecules up.
"First, NIDA's year 2000 goal is to have science replace ideology as the foundation of the nation's drug abuse prevention, treatment, and policy strategies." Second, because of this all-encompassing way of thinking about addiction, he ...
