The first large-scale analysis of proteins in the brains of monkeys addicted to cocaine reveals new information on how long-term cocaine use changes the amount and activity of various proteins affecting brain function.

New drug research suggests that teens may get addicted and relapse more easily than adults because developing brains are more powerfully motivated by drug-related cues. This conclusion has been reached by researchers who found that adolescent rats given cocaine – a powerfully addicting stimulant – were more likely than adults to prefer the place where they got it.

Researchers have uncovered a key genetic switch that chronic cocaine or stress influences to cause the brain to descend into a pathological state. In studies with mice they showed how chronic cocaine changes gene activity to enhance the addictive reward from the drug. And they showed similarly how chronic stress induces the same kinds of changes that hypersensitizes the brain, causing depression-like symptoms.

New measurements of brain activity in individuals addicted to cocaine confirm that addicted individuals have compromised sensitivity to monetary rewards.

The recreational use of cocaine has rapidly increased in many European countries over the past few years. One cause of this is the fall in the price of the drug on the street from 100 Euros for one gram (about 5 lines) in 2000 to 50 Euros in the Netherlands.

Just a few years after his release from prison, Robert Chambers, aka the “preppy killer,” is back up the river, this time for selling narcotics.

Scientists at the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility can tell whether marijuana confiscated in a traffic stop in Fairbanks likely came from Mexico or the Matanuska Valley.

The United Nations says the amount of land used to cultivate coca, the raw material in cocaine, has increased in Peru.

Romania's prime minister ordered an inquiry Friday after cocaine with a street value of more than EUR60 million (US82 million) lay undiscovered in a car in a government garage for more than four years.

Diego Maradona suffers a health crisis caused by excessive eating, smoking and drinking, and will remain in the hospital for at least two more weeks. Alfredo Cahe at first feared that Maradona was suffering from pancreatitis but it turned out to be alcoholic hepatitis.