The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) provides national leadership for research on drug abuse and addiction. Through its extramural research program and its Intramural Research Program in Baltimore, NIDA supports a comprehensive research portfolio that focuses on the biological, social, behavioral, and neuro-scientific bases of drug abuse as well as its causes, prevention, and treatment. NIDA also supports research training, career development, public education and research dissemination efforts. Through grants and contracts to investigators at research institutions around the country and overseas, NIDA supports research and research training on:
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- the neurobiological, behavioral, and social mechanisms underlying drug abuse and addiction;
- specific biomedical and behavioral effects of drugs of abuse, including nicotine, marijuana, heroin, and cocaine, on the body and brain;
- effective prevention and treatment approaches, including a broad research program designed to develop new treatment medications and behavioral therapies for drug addiction;
- the causes and consequences of drug abuse, including impact on society and morbidity and mortality in selected populations, e.g., ethnic minorities, youth, women;
the relationship of drug use to problem behaviors and psychosocial outcomes such as mental illness, unemployment, low socioeconomic status, violence;
- biomedical, behavioral, genetic, and social factors associated with vulnerability to drug abuse and addiction;
- the relationship of drug abuse to the acquisition, transmission, and clinical course of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and other diseases and the development of effective prevention/intervention strategies;
- the relationship of drug abuse to cultural and ethical issues such as health disparities;
- the mechanisms of pain and the search for non-addictive analgesics; and
- tobacco and nicotine addiction.