U.S. spent nearly $500K to study rats' addiction to cocaine

The US Department of Health has allocated almost $500 thousand to find out when rats are most prone to cocaine use. This was announced by Republican U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky in his annual report on Washington's most ridiculous spending.

"One of these studies looking at cocaine use was done at New York University. They received $419,400 from the U.S. Department of Health to study whether rats placed in a positive environment would be more likely to abstain from cocaine than rats in a negative and isolated environment," according to a document published Dec. 23 on the website of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

The observation found that those rats that were in isolated negative environments were more susceptible to using the drug than those in positive environments. The senator noted that the correlation between isolation and chemical dependency was evident from the experience of the lockdown in the coronavirus pandemic.

"Did the government really need to spend almost half a million dollars to see that social isolation and hunger could lead to increased drug use?" - the official inquired.

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Earlier, on December 3, billionaire American entrepreneur Ilon Musk said that the US is fast approaching total bankruptcy due to the growing national debt. The entrepreneur has repeatedly spoken out about the impending bankruptcy of the United States. On October 18, he stated that the reason for bankruptcy is too much spending by the US government. In order to prevent this, it is necessary to cut spending. Before that, on July 25, Max said that the U.S. expects bankruptcy, after information that interest payments on the country's national debt in 2024 will amount to $1.14 trillion.