Overview: medications development for the treatment of drug abuse

Drug abuse is of great public concern, and effective treatment strategies for opiate and cocaine dependence are urgently needed for the general addict population as well as for pregnant women and their infants. NIDA's effort to develop new pharmacotherapies as an adjunct to the treatment of opiate addiction has already led to the approval of LAAM and an NDA development program for buprenorphine. The momentum achieved by the new Medications Development Program's success with opiate addiction treatment must now be applied to the development of new treatments for cocaine addiction. With recent advances in neuroscience, imaging techniques, and pharmaceutical technology, the development of medications for significantly improving drug abuse treatment in a variety of directions holds real promise.