The war on drugs isn’t working, so it’s time to shine some light on the subject. By stimulating one part of the brain with laser light, researchers have shown that they can wipe away addictive behavior in rats–or do the opposite: turn non-addicted rats into compulsive cocaine seekers.

An estimated 1.4 million Americans addicted to that drug, and it’s frequently the cause of emergency room visits–482,188 in 2008 alone–and it is a top cause of heart attacks and strokes for people under 35.
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The number of smokers has gone down–fewer than one in five adults now smoke in the US, which is about half as many smokers as there were 50 years ago. Despite this, cigarettes kill more than 400,000 Americans every year. But the solution is at hand: make nicotine less addictive.

Most of us don’t realize it, but the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, signed in 2009, give the FDA the power to establish tobacco product standards including "provisions, where appropriate, for nicotine yields of the product." The thing they CAN’T do is require that nicotine levels be reduced to zero–but it can reduce them to NONaddictive levels.
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Some people may feel that drugs are OK, but others want desperately to get rid of their addictions. In case "just say no" doesn’t work for you, researchers have discovered a chemical that can help heroin users kick their habit, while at the same time increasing the pain relief for patients who are taking medicines like morphine.

The Medical Xpress website quotes researcher Mark Hutchinson as saying, "Our studies have shown conclusively that we can block addiction via the immune system of the brain, without targeting the brain’s wiring.
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New research suggests that marijuana may help autistics (although they’d have to be old enough to smoke it!) and the party drug Ecstasy may help veterans with PTSD. Many of these medicines (like LSD) were originally developed to ease psychiatric symptoms.

MDMA, better known as Ecstasy, can induce pulses of euphoria and a radiating affection. The drug was criminalized in 1985, but researchers are allowed access to it.
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