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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Marijuana Could Help Cocaine Addicts Kick Habit
Emma Young New Scientist
Wednesday 03 Oct 2001 Smoking marijuana could help prevent recovering cocaine addicts relapsing, research on rats suggests. Dutch and US scientists deprived cocaine-addicted rats of the drug for 14 days and then exposed them to environmental cues associated with their drug-taking. Such cues often trigger relapse in recovering human addicts. When the rats were also injected with a synthetic drug that blocks cannabinoid receptors - the same receptors targeted by the active compounds in marijuana - they were much less likely to seek an injection of cocaine. "We found that in the rats exposed to environmental cues associated with cocaine injection in the past, or to cocaine itself, the likelihood of relapse was reduced by 50 to 60 per cent," says Taco de Vries, who led the research at Vrije University in Amsterdam and the US National Institute on Drug Abuse. Unpublished studies by the team on heroin- addicted rats have shown similar results, he told New Scientist. Drugs to help prevent relapse in cocaine users are desperately needed, says de Vries. "Right now there is not much available. You can give anti-depressants to help with the symptoms of withdrawal but they don't seem to work very well." Alcohol And Smoking Danielle Piomelli of the University of California, Irvine agrees. "The finding that blockade of cannabinoid receptors prevents cue- mediated relapses to cocaine seeking is of obvious therapeutic significance," she writes in a commentary on the research in the journal Nature Medicine. It is not clear exactly how blocking cannabinoid receptors should reduce the likelihood of relapse, says the team. But the cannabinoid system is closely linked to the dopamine system, the body's "reward" centre. It is possible that blocking cannabinoid receptors could help people trying to give up alcohol, as well as heroin, cocaine and smoking, says deVries. However, the cannabinoid system does not seem to mediate the brain's response to stress triggers during withdrawal, which can also cause relapses in drug-taking. "As with other chronic diseases, it is reasonable to expect that treatment of drug craving and relapse will involve the use of more than one drug," writes Piomelli. Journal Reference: Nature Medicine (vol 7, p 1151)
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