Is alcohol a drug? Biochemically, the answer seems clear: the health effects of ethanol are well documented, as is its addictive nature. Yet culturally, politically and economically alcohol stands apart from other drugs, as does the research that has built up around it.
This conundrum has now acquired a practical urgency, thanks to a debate within the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Should separate research institutes for drugs and alcohol be dissolved and replaced by a unified addictions institute?
"We've been talking about this for a dozen years. It's time to just do the right thing," said Harold Varmus, director of the National Cancer Institute and a proponent of the plan, at a meeting of the NIH's Scientific Management Review Board in Bethesda, Maryland, on 15 September. The board voted 12–3 to recommend dismantling the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) in favour of a new entity that would house the addiction work of both, along with that of other NIH institutes. Non-addiction programmes would be moved elsewhere within the NIH. > > > >
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