About Your Brain Blog

Drugs of abuse that have received considerable attention lately include methamphetamine (‘meth’), MDMA (‘ecstasy’), and solvent inhalants (‘huffing’). Does funding of federal grants follow the same trend as drug abuse in our culture?

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is responsible for funding federal research grants that deal with basic, clinical, or community issues of drug abuse. The mission of NIDA is “to lead the Nation in bringing the power of science to bear on drug abuse and addiction”. The big policy question is how does NIDA decide which drug abuse grants deserve funding?

Categorizing drugs could provide a basis to allocate money for grants. Labeling drugs as likely to cause brain “damage” would put inhalants and ‘ecstasy’ (MDMA) at the top of the list. Labeling according to the number of users would put nicotine at the top of the list. Labeling based on the potential for making breakthroughs in neuroscience would, in my opinion, place hallucinogens near the top of the list. The potential to learn about the molecular basis of hallucinations could have a major impact on schizophrenia research and theories of consciousness.

I searched the National Institutes of Health database of research grants to gain a sense of which drugs of abuse are being investigated. The searches were performed with drug names as the keywords to determine the number of grants funded by NIDA in 1997, 2002, and 2007. The grants could entail basic, clinical, or community research since the results were not further subdivided into the type of research. It should be noted that amphetamine could refer to drugs such as ‘speed’ as well as hallucinogenic amphetamines such as ‘ecstasy’. Similarly, ‘LSD’ is one of many hallucinogens.

The data provide some general trends and raise some interesting issues. First, the overall increase in research grants from 1997 to 2002 was largely due to Clinton’s policy to double the NIH budget (Independent Investigator R01 grants typically cover 5 years). In contrast, the Bush policy has been abysmal for research. Second, NIDA funding appears to more closely parallel the number of users and/or the potential for long-term effects (i.e. smoking) rather than the absolute potential for danger. Another possibility is that the numbers reflect addictive potential, but amphetamines are certainly more addictive than marijuana. Third, It is unclear whether the small number of inhalant grants is due to a small number of well-written grants that deserve funding or low NIDA priority. Whatever the reason, grants that deal with the immediate danger of readily available inhalants are grossly under-represented.