Nora's Blog

Rising Stimulant Deaths Show that We Face More than Just an Opioid Crisis

There is an alarming increase in deaths involving the stimulant drugs methamphetamine and cocaine

November 12, 2020

Image of a penny and a few specks of faux fentanyl to show lethality

The True, Deadly Scope of America’s Fentanyl Problem

May 1, 2018 | Today, a new analysis in JAMA by epidemiologists at NIDA and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reveals the scope of the crisis, and the rapidity with which...

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What Patients are Saying on a blackboard

Nora's Blog

Listening to Patients’ Voices in Developing New Opioid Addiction Treatments

April 5, 2018 | One of the pillars of the current federal initiatives to end the opioid crisis is the development of new medications to treat opioid addiction. The FDA Patient-Focused Drug Development Initiative...

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Nora's Blog

What Does It Mean When We Call Addiction a Brain Disorder?

March 23, 2018 | Informed Americans no longer view addiction as a moral failing, and more and more policymakers are recognizing that punishment is an ineffective and inappropriate tool for addressing a person’s drug...

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Nora's Blog

Could Naltrexone Be Used to Treat Pregnant Women with Opioid Addiction?

February 22, 2018 | A recent study published in Lancet found that extended-release naltrexone was equally effective at reducing illicit opioid use as the partial agonist buprenorphine if patients could be successfully initiated on...

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Nora's Blog

NIDA’s Past-Year Achievements Point the Way Toward Future Advances

January 10, 2018 | 2017 brought exciting new basic science findings, including some striking new insights into the structure and functioning of receptors that play important roles in substance use, addiction, and pain.

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Nora's Blog

Monitoring the Future Results Show Reduced Opioid Misuse but Popularity of Vaping Among Youth

December 14, 2017 | Today the results of the 2017 Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey were released by NIDA-funded researchers at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and overall the news is encouraging.

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Nora's Blog

NIDA’S Avant-Garde Award Competition Continues to Foster Transformative HIV/AIDS Research

December 1, 2017 | NIH-funded science continues to make great strides in the fight against HIV. To foster such research, 10 years ago NIDA created its Avant-Garde Award competition to fund bold projects that...

Nora's Blog

Mobilizing Citizen Science to Address the Overdose Epidemic

November 16, 2017 | Social media and crowdsourcing apps could be particularly useful for gathering and sharing information in real time about overdoses and using that information to prevent overdose deaths, thereby translating “citizen...

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Illustration of a diverse crowd of people

Nora's Blog

Addressing the Opioid Crisis Means Confronting Socioeconomic Disparities

October 25, 2017 | When we speak of addiction as a chronic disorder of the brain, it thus includes an understanding that some individuals are more susceptible to drug use and addiction than others.

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Photo of researcher working with a pipette under a hood

Nora's Blog

New Medication Formulations Could Quickly Make a Difference for Treating Opioid Addiction

August 22, 2017 | As Francis Collins and I wrote in May, NIH and NIDA are committed to an “all scientific hands on deck” effort to end the opioid crisis in America by halving...

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