The National Institute on Drug Abuse:

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) was established in 1973 as the lead Federal agency for drug abuse education, training, treatment, rehabilitation, and research. Working with designated Single State Agencies (SSAs), NIDA developed an effective and flexible Federal-State partnership, with SSAs given increasing responcibility for planning and administering drug abuse prevention and treatment services within their States. Since the advent of the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Services Block Grant Program in FY 1982, NIDA no longer provides direct financial assistance to treatment and prevention program. Instead, it is being organized into function units in: general areas of basic biological studies of drug and substance abuse; animal and human studies revelant to developing more effective treatment and prevention activities; and epidemiological studies. Another important unit will disseminate research findings and other relevant information to researchers, clinicians, and the public. NIDA's research program has made several major contributions in the past several years. These include: (1) the identification and isolation of opiate receptors and of endogenous opiate-like substances; (2) the development of techniques for swiftly and reliable assessing drug abuse trends and of ongoing epidemiological data systems; (3) the development of new and more effective drug abuse treatment agents, most notably LAAM, naltrexone, and buprenorphine; (4) the classification of the addictive properties of nicotine; (5) the controlled testing of several school-based drug abuse prevention strategies; (6) the completion of a unique study on the drug paraphernalia market; (7) a large-scale investigation of drug use patterns in rural areas; (8) important data on what types of treatment are most effective for particular types of drug abusers.