> Short of a drug that provided a permanent cure for opioid addiction itself, I'm not sure what sort of solutions can be pursued by scientific/tech research, as

> Short of a drug that provided a permanent cure for opioid addiction itself, I'm not sure what sort of solutions can be pursued by scientific/tech research, as opposed to addressing the root social causes. People have actually been trying vaccine approaches to opioid addiction for a while, but it's tricky since opioids are small molecules which inherently don't give you a lot to work with as far as antigen presentation. Apparently there has been some promising evidence recently though. See Derek Lowe's blog below for details. http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2017/06/26/a-heroin-vaccine http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2017/06/26/a-h...