The National Institute on Drug Abuse’s (NIDA) massive collection of journals and books related to drug use and addiction has been shut down because of budget cuts, according to the organ of the Substance Abuse Librarians and Information Specialists, SALIS News. The fate of the 12,000 journal volumes and 8,000 books in the collection is unclear at this point, but it will likely be scattered between the National Institute of Health, other drug and addiction collections, and the personal libraries of researchers.

While the collection was used primarily by NIDA staff, it also contains many historic documents. The collection dates back to 1929 and includes every article published by program staff since NIDA’s predecessor, the Addiction Research Center, was founded in 1935. Also among the holdings are the entire set of the Committee on Problems of Drug Dependence meetings abstracts/minutes since its inception in 1929, and numerous other government documents and materials only found in such special collections.

NIDA gets over a billion dollars a year to conduct research on drug abuse and addiction, but it can’t seem to find the money to keep this resource going.

As the SALIS News noted: “What will this mean in the long term for those who had relied on [the NIDA Library] for the information they sought? Will it be just a few clicks on Google for them to find the information? What about the history of this research unit so long a part of the early drug addiction research in America? And gee, I thought drug abuse was supposed to be one of the major problems in America.”

* Smith writes for DRCNet, the online news and activism service supported by donations that publishes the Drug War Chronicles. To subscribe, visit stopthedrugwar.org