Walter Ling

Contingency management for tobacco smoking in methadone-maintained opiate addicts.

Seventeen methadone-maintained cigarette smokers received 4 weeks of contingency management (CM) as a stop-smoking intervention. Results indicated that CM patients significantly reduced breath CO levels from baseline to completion of treatment and that 23.4% of patients maintained 1 week or more of continued smoking abstinence. Results indicated a link between smoking abstinence and reduced cocaine use, although not reduced opiate use, which raised questions about possible shared biological and psychological mechanisms for tobacco and cocaine use.

Integration of research in pharmacotherapy for addictive disease: Where are we? Where are we going?

Systematic efforts by NIDA and NIAAA to develop new medications for drug and alcohol dependence have resulted in recent FDA approval of LAAM for opiate dependence, naltrexone for alcohol dependence and, more recently, a nasal spray for nicotine dependence. This article reviews the current strategies that guide these development efforts, including further examination of the interactions between potential pharmacotherapeutic agents and the drugs of abuse, the enhancement of pharmacotherapeutic efficacy with nonpharmacological interventions, and the development of more precise and meaningful measures of research outcome.