"Cocaine torches" (also known as flashlights) are to be issued to pub and club stewards in Renfrewshire, Scotland, in an attempt to tackle drug abuse. They work by illuminating the hairs on the inside of the nose and around the nose area. If cocaine has been taken, it shows up bright green.
A new study in rats has found that N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a commonly available and generally nontoxic amino acid derivative, reverses changes in the brain’s circuitry associated with cocaine addiction. The reversal appears to lessen the cravings associated with cocaine, thus helping to prevent relapse.
By Leslie Thompson
Sometime during the course of your life, you’ve probably heard the catchphrase “crack is whack.” Although it may produce a few chuckles, crack cocaine is no laughing matter. According to a recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), approximately 2.1 million Americans are current cocaine users. Of these, approximately 610,000 are crack users. These statistics are cause for alarm, and something must be done to combat this growing epidemic.
There are several popular misconceptions circulating in society today as to what exactly addiction is, and whether or not addiction should be treated as a disease by health professionals. To many scientists, addiction has long been associated as a by-product of altered mental states where the brain cannot distinguish between healthy and unhealthy behavior. For example, addictions manifested in the form of obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD) are thought to arise from abnormal neuron firing in the brain; in other words, the brain of an addict displays the same need for the desired object in the same way that one would crave basic necessities like food or water. However, scientists from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine have revealed surprising information on how an addiction can actually alter the activity of certain proteins and neurons in the brain. This new research can help scientists understand why addiction is so hard to overcome, and how to effectively prevent and treat addict relapses.
