Having recently chaired a policy study group in theWhite House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), which concluded unanimously that a merger of the US National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism would benefit research and public health [1], I was cheered to see Grabowski [2] come to the same conclusion. Both of us are echoing an earlier recommendation from the Institute of Medicine [3]. In this commentary, I supplement Grabowski’s case for a combined institute with some historical evidence on the changing face of substance use in
the United States. Because support of the proposed merger is often attributed to being the inbuilt bias of ‘NIDA people’, let me aver for the record that I have never applied for a grant from NIDA, nor served on any NIDA committee. Indeed, I have in fact been extensively funded by and involved in the operations of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) for many years (e.g. study section member, research portfolio advisor, center grant advisory board member and reviewer).
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