In this classic piece, Stanton and Richard DeGrandpre review human and animal research against the claim that cocaine is such a powerful reinforcer that it invariably causes the organism with unlimited access to self-administer the drug to the exclusion of all other activity and reward, often until death. In place of this model, Stanton and Rich apply behavioral economic research and models which show that animals balance the opportunities for available rewards, among which cocaine appears to be a strong but far from overwhelming or unique example. They contrast their view with that of Nobel prize-winning economist Gary Becker, who rather than suggesting an economic model of behavior instead imagines that drugs create a biologically compelling state that drives the addict's behavior.

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Published in Addiction Research, 6:235-263, 1998.
© 1998 Overseas Publishers Association.
Reprinted with permission from Gordon and Breach.

Stanton Peele
Morristown, New Jersey

Richard J. DeGrandpre
Dept. of Psychology, Saint Michael's College, Colchester, Vermont

Contents

Abstract

Introduction: A Brief History of the Concept of Addiction

Animal Research With Cocaine

• Cocaine's Addictiveness
• Animal Studies of Cocaine's Toxicity
• Cocaine as a Universally Addicting Reinforcer

Studies of Huan Cocaine Use

• Epidemiologic, Community, and Longitudinal Data
• Differences in Human and Animal Drug Use

Addictiveness as a Pharmacological Property of a Drug

The (Behavioral) Economics of Drug Demand

• Demand Curves for Drug and Non-Drug Reinforcers
• Cocaine Demand and Response-Rate Curves
• Scheduled Alternatives: Demand for Cocaine Versus Food
• Community Reinforcement Therapy

Policy Implications of the Economic Understanding of Addiction

Notes

References

Abstract

Addiction is an evocative psychological and medical term whose meaning has changed significantly over time. For most of this century it has been described in terms of an abstinence syndrome (dependence and withdrawal) and associated with heroin use. In the 1980s, however, cocaine replaced heroin as the prototypical drug of abuse. Cocaine had heretofore not been considered to produce "physical dependence." Nonetheless, for both cocaine and heroin, current models of addiction — models widely propagated by the media — reduce drug use patterns to the properties of drugs and biological characteristics of the user. In creating this model, scientific and clinical debates along with public debates rely on the supposedly typical, inevitably addicting results of repeated cocaine consumption. Yet naturalistic human drug use and drug taking by animals in the laboratory instead reinforce the picture that use of all drugs depends on the user's environment. Indeed, even the most severe examples of compulsive drug use can be reversed when key elements in the setting are modified. Such findings should by now play a fundamental role in both scientific and public conceptions of addiction, but they do not.