Professor Wayne Hall

Research Interests

Over the past 20 years I have worked in the field of addiction, addressing socially important and intellectually challenging scientific and policy questions at the intersection between human biology and history. In2001, I moved to the University of Queensland to work on the public policy and ethics of new biotechnologies arising from the sequencing of the human genome. I now work on addiction and related topics from the perspectives of advances in genetics and neuroscience asking the following type of questions:

What are the potential uses that can be made of evidence that there is a genetic basis for the likelihood of developing nicotine dependence?
Should we consider screening the entire Australian population for genetic susceptibility to addiction?
Should we use genetic information to match smokers to treatments that give them the best chance of quitting?
Should we use vaccines that have been developed to treat addiction to vaccinate children and adolescents in order to prevent cocaine, nicotine and other types of addiction?
Should we use consider neurosurgical treatments for intractable addiction?
Should we allow the courts to legally coerce addicted persons to undergo treatments that involve the implantation of long-acting drugs to block the effects of addictive drugs?

The award of an NHMRC Australia Fellowship this year has enabled me to assemble a team of bright young researchers to critically examine the most promising applications of neurobiological research on addiction and present our analyses in ways that will inform public policy debates about these applications.

In The Media

Marijuana users twice as likely to cause car crash - 10 February 2012
Healthy image up in smoke as nation lives the high life - 6 January 2012
Australia's illicit drug use the highest in world, study finds - 7 January 2012
Aussies, Kiwis lead world in cannabis use - 6 January 2012
200 million people use illegal drugs; what is the toll on health? - 5 January 2012

Research Projects

Among our current research projects are:

Assessing the global prevalence of illicit drug use and the contribution of harms related to their use to the global burden of disease;
The ethical and social implications of drug-induced compulsive behaviour in patients with Parkinsons' Disease treated with dopamine agonists;
The feasibility and ethical acceptability of vaccinating adolescents against the effects of nicotine to prevent cigarette smoking
The ethical implications of proposals to treat addiction using deep brain stimulation (DBS);
The ethical and social implications of using drugs to enhance human cognitive performance ("neuroenhancement ").

Key publications

Hall, W. The prospects for immunotherapy in smoking cessation. Lancet, 2002, 360, 1089-1091.

Hall, W. and Pacula, R.L. Cannabis Use and Dependence: Public Health and Public Policy. Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2003.

Gartner, C. Hall, W., Lim, S., Vos, T., Bertram, M. and Wallace, A. Assessment of Swedish snus for tobacco harm reduction: an epidemiological modelling study. Lancet. 2007, 369, 2010-2014.

Carter, A., Capps, B., Hall, W. (eds) New Developments in Neuroscience and Genetics: Implications for Policy and Practice. European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction, Lisbon, 2009.

Hall W, Gartner C, Carter A. The genetics of nicotine addiction liability: ethical and social policy implications Addiction.2008, 103, 350-359.

Hall, W. and Degenhardt, L. The adverse health effects of nonmedical cannabis use. Lancet, 2009, 374, 1383-1391