There used to be a stigma against any type of mental illness in our country. Finally, society is accepting that mental illness is a treatable disease. Subsequently. we have people functioning in society that would have been locked away in a mental hospital years ago. People are slow to change and rid themselves of old theories/ideas. Hopefully, this rigid type of thinking will change and society will finally realize that addiction is also a treatable disease. Money, esp. for further development of a cocaine vaccine is crucial to society in my opinion.

The day I see big pharma caring about American people with issues, is the day I see pigs fly

Is the preferred target of treatment to promote drug use to fight the cravings for drug use, to promote dependence on drugs and professionals rather than self-dependence in the management of life? Of course a drug may be discoverable to modify in a more socially-beneficial direction all emotions and behaviors. Everyone has issues that, in the eyes of others, might be defined as bizarre, or anti-social. But it should be obvious that in the end society may appear to run more smoothly, but in the end that joker in the deck of human personality will find a way to tweak society’s nose, and not just the self-injury we today define as “addiction” will re-emerge, but more self- and socially-dangerous behaviors. Behavior is an expression of personality, and personality is the expression of the person. Drugging the person to achieve behavior modification is not only short-sighted and inefficient; it promotes behavior antithetical to the desired treatment outcome of independence and self-reliance. Any other outcome is not only doomed to long-term failure, or worse; it is unethical professionally, and immoral socially.

I'm putting my money on the alcohol and/or drug industrial complex to assure there will be no pill to reduce abuse and addiction. Their profits are too dependent upon abuse and addiction.

Giving a vaccine for drug abuse is no more "behavior modification" than giving a vaccine for swine flu, small pox, or ovarian cysts. It may, in the end, be the best public policy, and if my children weren't already grown, I might have considered giving it to them. It probably should not be made mandatory, however, like other childhood vaccines, because drug abuse is not a contagion.

this is ridiculous! So the government wants us to inject toxins in our system just in case we may have a predisposition to addictive substances. Not for me thank you. There are alternatives that the government should be looking at.

Right on Pat & Diane The rest of you must not have watched someone you love with the brain disease of addiction. It is horrendous to say the least. I would rather my love one have cancer than this disease. Whoever you are David Turner, you have no clue!!

The idea of vaccinating to "inoculate" people against addiction to substance abuse does not address the behavior often associated with the disease of addiction. Nor will a vaccine ever create an awareness for why people self medicate.

With Guardasil being used as an example,I don't feel too safe with these vaccines,don't give your daughters Guardasil. Read up on youtube.The swine flu vaccines contain theirmerol that 50 times more deadly than mercury and squalene.

I just curious -- given that the Fed government is so keen to see these drugs developed, will taking them be "voluntary"?

what alarms me is the increasing emphasis on addiction as only a biochemical illness - it is far more complex than that. What is needed is research about RECOVERY and what makes RECOVERY sustainable lifelong. IF funding goes into this myopic research, it validates the wrong direction & continues to leave us with an intervention system based on pathology & moralism.

"Drugging the person to achieve behavior modification is not only short-sighted and inefficient; it promotes behavior antithetical to the desired treatment outcome. . ." Yes, of couse - based on your assumption that addicts CAN and WILL stay sober long enough to get their personality defects treated. So the mortality from drugs and alcohol is what? just weeding out the bad apples? We already went through the same nonsense with antidepressants. No physician has to or wants to prolong suffering for years just to prove your theory...wrong!

Again people are going to think there is some magic bullet that will 'cure' addiction. As DeeDEe rightly says, there is far more to addiction than some biochemical illness. Similar blocking agents are singularly ineffective and do absolutely nothing to deal with the many root causes of addiction. As the articles on this are saying, addicts will invariably try using more and more of the substance to achieve a high if the high is blocked. They are also addicted to the life style and scoring and preparing the drugs - it simply won't work just to remove the high. As there is highly effective inpatient rehab treatment - my clients achieve between 85% and 100% success rates depending upon their chosen clinic - then why spend billions on trying to find something else that works? Spend it on what we know works and let the odd University waste its funds researching other chemical solutions that in 10 years time will be banned as having a more negative effect than the drug they were trying to overcome - Methadone springs to mind. I'm firmly with David Turner on this. And Connie, David has far more clue than most. If your children had cancer you would give them every possible treatment but you do not have to resort to untested and unproven treatments because there are viable treatments for most cancers. There are also viable treatments for most addictions/addicts. Sure addiction is horrendous but this ain't the solution.