The mu opioid receptor (MOR, OPRM)--the principal receptor involved in narcotic addiction--has been shown to display basal (spontaneous, constitutive) signaling activity. Interaction with other signaling proteins, such as calmodulin, regulates basal MOR activity. Providing a mechanism for long-lasting regulation, basal MOR activity potentially plays a key role in addiction, in combination with ...

Over 25 years anti-opium laws were enacted by three Asian governments in countries where opium use was traditional. Within months, heroin use suddenly appeared; and within a decade, heroin addiction surpassed opium addiction. The laws led to (1) increased price of narcotic drugs, (2) a heroin "industry," (3) corruption of the law enforcement system, and (4) major health problems involving paren...

Students always look surprised when, lecturing on drug policy, I state that the international aspects of drug control policy are more significant than the domestic ones. People know about the history of the midnineteenth-century Chinese opium wars and Britain's apparent "foisting" of opium on the Chinese. But the rest is a blank. The existence since the First World War of a system of internatio...

The study cited below found that only 3 per cent of women who used water in labour used pethidine as well, compared to 60 per cent of women who laboured on land. A reduction in the use of such narcotic drugs is welcomed by all concerned, as its is now widely recognized that they can have a depressive effect on both mother and baby's central nervous system and may lead to a variety of complicati...

The present paper delves into the question of whether and to what extent it is appropriate to leave addiction problems between the conflicting priorities of therapy and criminalization. After outlining the issue the criminal addictive behaviour including crimes associated with drug misuse and with obtaining drugs is described. Subsequently it is discussed if and how you could make allowances fo...

A retrospective survey was conducted on 67 boys in a London remand home during the years 1965-7 inclusive who were known to have taken drugs. The boys were divided into a "hard" and a "soft" group according to whether or not there was evidence of narcotic taking. The groups were compared and the hard group showed a significantly greater incidence of abnormal personality, family history of psych...