Trading addictions is not a solution

It's this kind of research that enriches pharmaceutical companies and gives science a bad name.

Researchers in Saskatchewan have discovered a way to block a pathway in the brain's pleasure receptors that are involved in drug addiction. The team hopes the findings will lead to a universal therapy that works regardless of what drug an addict abuses.

So far, Canadian scientists have found a peptide that appears to block a signalling pathway in the brain's ventral tegmental area, an area stimulated by drug abuse.

So they want to develop a drug they can sell to medical providers in order to keep people from desiring drugs Big Pharma doesn't control. Better they invest in treatment programs that teach people to make choices against drug abuse, not studies to figure out how to substitute one drug for another. But here's the money quote in the article.

The molecule also showed a downside, in that it not only prevents highs from drugs, but also prevents enjoyment from other pleasures such as food and sex.

Somehow replacing addicts with a population of zombies who can't feel anything, perhaps not even remorse for bad behavior, doesn't sound like progress to me.