Re: I Need A Measure

John Schutkeker wrote:

For a grant application I'm writing, I need to make a table of different addictive substances, and their "degree" of addictiveness. Does anybody have any ideas what numerical quantity would be used to measure the addictive "strength" of a drug? Is modern medicine een capable of measuring such a quantity, yet?


People have at least done rough estimates of some aspects of addictive potential; I'm not sure how quantitative it is. Dr. Peter Proctor posted this ranking of "reinforcement" in talk.politics.drugs a while back:

" A rough ranking on "reinforcement" is smoked nicotine is number one,
followed by smoked cocaine, then injectable opiates. Oral alcohol,
stimulants such as meth, other sedative hypnotics, and oral opiates
are all about equally reinforcing, Followed by intranasal cocaine
and caffeine. then marijuana and the hallucinogens ( the latter are
hardly reinforcing at all).

Note that the dosage form is important-- smoking or injection
give higher instantaneous levels and are thus more reinforcing. But
not enough to really justify much higher penalties."

Don't have a link, but it's been discussed in the drugs groups a few times. Of course you could do a Medline and other searches for it.

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