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Opioid deprivation increased the degree to which dependent individuals discounted delayed heroin and money. Understanding the conditions that affect how drug-dependent individuals discount delayed rewards might help us understand the myopic choices made by such individuals and help improve treatment outcomes.

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To determine whether reduction of smoking via contingency management in dependent smokers would decrease the discounting of delayed reinforcers compared with smokers who did not reduce their smoking, moderate to heavy cigarette smokers were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: a contingency management condition and a control condition. In three phases (baseline discounting determination for hypothetical money and cigarettes, implementation of a contingency management or control condition, and postintervention discounting determination), the procedure to reinforce reduction in cigarette smoking produced CO decreases in all subjects exposed to that procedure. Discounting decreased significantly for both cigarettes and money among the group for whom smoking reductions were reinforced, whereas the control group showed no significant change for either commodity. Reductions in smoking can lead to reductions in discounting, and increased discounting in current smokers may be a reversible effect of nicotine dependence.Delay discounting refers to the intuitive conception that the influence of a delayed reward decreases as a function of that delay (Logue, 1988). For instance, the subjective value (and thereby the influence) of some monetary reward available immediately is greater than the same reward available after 1 month, which is still greater than the same reward available after 1 year. Studies of delay discounting typically attempt to determine the present subjective value of rewards at numerous delays, resulting in some index of the rate of discounting.Rate of discounting is a popular metric in studies of drug dependence, consistently showing that drug-dependent populations discount delayed rewards more than nondependent controls do (see Bickel & Marsch, 2001). Among the many drug-dependent populations who have undergone delay discounting measures are cigarette smokers. Studies by Baker, Johnson,

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