Teasing out the insulin effect. On the face of it, the study seems to come out of left field A group of researchers claimed that marijuana smokers showed 16 per cent lower fasting insulin levels than non-smokers. The study, called The Impact of Marijuana Use on Glucose, Insulin, ... Read more

Prohibition and the tobacco control endgame. Despite all our efforts in recent years to reduce the percentage of Americans who smoke cigarettescurrently about one in fivethe idea of full-blown cigarette prohibition has not gained much traction. That may be changing, as prominent ... Read more

If Valium makes you groggy, and Ambien makes you sleepwalk A compound that blocks a brain receptor you probably have never heard of may hold the key to the next generation of sleeping pillsand there is always a next generation of sleeping pills. A new class of hypnotic compounds ... Read more

The dilemma of dwindling drug development. Drugs for the treatment of addiction are now a fact of life. For alcoholism alone, the medications legally available by prescription include disulfiram Antabuse, naltrexone Revia and Vivitroland acamprosate Campral, the most recent FDA-a... Read more

Which came first, the addiction or the trauma About a year ago, Jonathan Taylor, a professor at California State University in Fullerton, assigned his students some reading from my book, The Chemical Carousel, for his Drugs, Politics, and Cultural Change course. At the same time,... Read more