Drug addiction involves potentially life-long behavioral abnormalities that are caused invulnerable individuals by repeated exposure to a drug of abuse. The persistence of these behavioral changes suggests that long-lasting changes in gene expression, within particularregions of the brain, may contribute importantly to the addiction phenotype. Work over the pastdecade has demonstrated a crucial role for epigenetic mechanisms in driving lasting changes ingene expression in diverse tissues, including the brain. In this review article, we will be discussed the prevalence of drug addiction among high-school students and its association with violence and school behavior. The present study provides baseline data focusing specifically onthe extent of the importance of early detection of drug addiction among vulnerable young people,enabling the development of educational programs to prevent abuse and dependence onsubstances due to drug addiction and violence. As will be seen, there is robust evidence thatrepeated exposure to drugs of abuse induces changes within the brain’s reward regions in threemajor modes of epigenetic regulation histone modifications such as acetylation and methylation,DNA methylation, and non-coding RNAs. In several instances, it has been possible todemonstrate directly the contribution of such epigenetic changes to addiction-related behavioural abnormalities. Studies of epigenetic mechanisms of addiction are also providing anunprecedented view of the range of genes and non-genic regions that are affected by repeateddrug exposure and the precise molecular basis of that regulation.

Keywords: Drug addiction, Drug Abuse, Drugs, Medicines, Violence