Since he ditched Marlboro Lights five years ago, Daniel's fix is fruit-flavored nicotine gum that comes in neat, pop-out strips. He gets through 12 to 15 pieces a day

Chief Leonard Campanello announced that any “addict” who walks into their department with drugs and paraphernalia will not be criminally charged.

A leading psychologist has warned that young men are facing a crisis of masculinity due to excessive use of video games and pornography. Psychologist and professor emeritus at Stanford University Phillip Zimbardo has made the warnings, which form a major part of his latest book, Man (Dis)Connected. In an interview on the BBC World Service's Weekend programme, Zimbardo spoke about the results of his study, an in-depth look into the lives of...

Slot machines perfected addictive gaming. Now, tech wants their tricks.

Ah Chao first came across drugs as a teenager, when his cousin asked him to hold his tourniquet while he shot up heroin. Now a stocky 32-year-old in jeans and a black nylon jacket, Ah Chao (not his real name) recalls between slurps from a bowl of noodles how frightened he was. Ah Chao is a witness to the silent spread of crystal meth into China’s vast rural areas, a blight sweeping the countryside – but out of the public eye – in a striking echo of America’s experience.

An intervention in the emergency department designed to encourage tobacco cessation in smokers appears to be effective. Two and a half times more patients in the intervention group were tobacco-free three months after receiving interventions than those who did not receive the interventions, according to a study published online Friday in Annals of Emergency Medicine.

Seattle is taking a revolutionary approach to treating drug abuse, diverting addicts who potentially face criminal charges to housing, treatment, and other services.

In neuroscience, food is something we call a “natural reward.” In order for us to survive as a species, things like eating, having sex and nurturing others must be pleasurable to the brain so that these behaviours are reinforced and repeated.

Dihan’s family is very proud of him. Until just a few months ago, Dihan was smoking up to two packs of cigarettes a day, but he has managed to cut down. “He was sick, he was coughing a lot, and the doctor said he had to quit. He’s been trying hard, and now he just smokes five a day,” said his mother, Sulawati. Dihan is six and has been smoking for years.

Heroin deaths in the U.S. have nearly quadrupled in the past 15 years and skyrocketed since 2010 according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Men overdose more often than women, the report shows, and young white men are succumbing at a higher rate than any other demographic—roughly 7 deaths per 100,000 people. Unfortunately the Justice Department saw this coming. The feds have been cracking down on prescription drug abuse throughout the past decade...

The first comprehensive evaluation of Australia's ground-breaking plain packaging tobacco laws shows they are working, the Victorian Cancer Council says. Fourteen separate studies on the impact of plain packaging in its first year were published today in a special supplement to the British Medical Journal. The research found after the laws were implemented, there was a "statistically significant increase" in the number of people thinking about and making attempts to quit smoking.

Cody Spafford found both solace and redemption in the kitchen of Seattle’s most celebrated restaurant. What turned a promising chef into a bank robber?

The use and sale of electronic cigarettes will be restricted in B.C. under legislation introduced by the government Thursday. Health Minister Terry Lake said the government will place rules and regulations on the e-cigarette devices, which are increasing in popularity, in order to protect public health.

Concern over the U.S. drug epidemic has focused on the growing abuse of prescription painkillers like oxycodone. But if overdose deaths are any indication, heroin may still be a bigger problem. Death rates from heroin overdoses have nearly quadrupled since 2000 to reach 2.7 per 100,000 people in 2013, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In his 1997 book The Selfish Brain, Robert DuPont, the first director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, describes marijuana’s impact on its users’ life prospects. “Unlike cocaine, which often brings users to their knees, marijuana claims its victims in a slower and more cruel fashion,” DuPont says. “It robs many of them of their desire to grow and improve, often making heavy users settle for what is left over in life…Marijuana makes its users lose their purpose and...

With heroin addiction skyrocketing, methadone remains the gold standard for narcotics dependence treatment. Yet cops nationwide target heavily regulated methadone clinics to turn vulnerable addicts into informants, with little public outcry, reaffirming the medicine’s enduring, deadly stigma.

Studies on the health impact of "plain" or standardized cigarette packs suggest they can deter non-smokers from taking up the habit and may cut the number of cigarettes smokers get through, scientists said on Tuesday. In a collection of scientific papers in the journal Addiction, researchers said that while standardized packs were still too new to provide substantial evidence, studies so far showed they were likely to reduce smoking rates.

Treatment for prescription drug abuse and addiction requires seeing specialists with an understanding of a patient’s chronic health conditions.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of an attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder drug to treat binge eating. The drug, Vyvanse, is usually used for ADHD but it's been shown to help control binge-eating disorder, the FDA said. "In binge-eating disorder, patients have recurrent episodes of compulsive overeating during which they consume larger amounts of food than normal and experience the sense that they lack control.

It is now one hundred years since drugs were first banned -- and all through this long century of waging war on drugs, we have been told a story about addiction by our teachers and by our governments. This story is so deeply ingrained in our minds that we take it for granted. It seems obvious. It seems manifestly true. Until I set off three and a half years ago on a 30,000-mile journey for my new book, Chasing The Scream: The First And Last Days of the War on...