The Los Angeles Times ran a pair of opposing pro/con pieces recently. I saw the headline for the con piece and thought it might be reefer madness rant, but thankfully it's much smarter than that. Acknowledging that marijuana's risks are relatively small, he argues that the FDA refuses to approve or yanks approval of drugs … Continue reading Medical marijuana

The New York Times reports that the movement to lower the drinking age is gathering steam. On my other blog, I posted about this last year and said:I have a few brief reactions. First, I don't have a strong opinion on the matter, other than I'd be troubled by 18 year old high-school students being … Continue reading Not quite an adult

I received a marketing email from this treatment program today. I don't know anything about the program and I don't mean for this post to endorse or criticize the program in any way.What struck me is that it is marketing itself as a program specializing in suboxone addiction treatment. That treating addiction to suboxone, not … Continue reading Suboxone addiction

This study calls for treatment to improve compliance with HIV treatment guidelines.Note that I'm not saying HR is bad or that it should be abolished. I'm saying that it is not enough.

From Greater Good (pdf) magazine:In my own lab, for example, we dug up dozens of images of societal groups that were identifiable in an instant: people with disabilities, older people, homeless people, drug addicts, rich businessmen, and American Olympic athletes. We asked research participants to tell us what emotions these images evoked in them; as … Continue reading The science of stigma

England reports that rates of drug related mental health problems have doubled.The number of people admitted to hospital in England with mental illnesses linked to use of illegal drugs has doubled in the past decade, official figures revealed yesterday. The NHS Information Centre said 38,170 adults and children were admitted with drug-related mental and behavioural … Continue reading Drug-linked mental illness

The Healing Place continues to gather steam as a model for responding to homelessness and addiction.

Productivity 501 offers more wisdom from rats:There was an experiment where researchers were given a set of rats and told to rate their ability to learn mazes. They were told that certain rats were “smart rats” and had an abnormally high IQ. When the researchers tested the rats, their studies showed that the “smart rats” … Continue reading Rat and expectations

More exciting, yet creepy, progress in experiments that interrupt addiction by interfering with memory reconsolidation:Barry Everitt, an experimental psychologist at the University of Cambridge in England, focused his group's efforts on proteins called NMDA-type glutamate receptors in rat brains. Previous work on addiction and post-traumatic stress has shown that these proteins—which are found on the … Continue reading Memory interuption interupts addiction in rats