Nature Reviews Immunology
January 2012 Vol 12 No 1
http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v11/n12/index.html

Science and society
Vaccines targeting drugs of abuse: is the glass half-empty or half-full?
Kim D. Janda & Jennifer B. Treweek
p67 | doi:10.1038/nri3130

The advent of vaccines targeting drugs of abuse heralded a fundamentally different approach to treating substance-related disorders. In contrast to traditional pharmacotherapies for drug abuse, vaccines act by sequestering circulating drugs and terminating the drug-induced ‘high’ without inducing unwanted neuromodulatory effects. Drug-targeting vaccines have entered clinical evaluation, and although these vaccines show promise from a biomedical viewpoint, the ethical and socioeconomic implications of vaccinating patients against drugs of abuse merit discussion within the scientific community.