decades. more recently, it has been proposed that mla might be useful in reducing nicotine reward without precipitating symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. this suggestion was made on the basis of experiments in which intraperitoneal doses of ~4 mg/kg and 8 mg/kg of mla significantly reduced nicotine self-administration in rats. most recently, it has been suggested that mla had potential in the treatment of cannabis dependence. however, this suggestion was apparently based only on work by solinas et al. who showed that doses of 0.3-5.6 mg/kg, i.p., in rats, dose-dependently antagonized the discriminative-stimulus effects of 3 mg/kg thc. given that the early soviet work with "mellictine" indicated that as little as ~0.2-0.3 mg/kg, orally, in man (assuming a weight of 60–70 kg, for the sake of making the dose conversion) could produce symptoms of toxicity, and that oral administration of most drugs typically requires more drug than parenteral administration, it is uncertain if mla will prove to be a practical treatment for either nicotine or cannabis addiction, based on the effective doses required in the rat experiments. in a recent review, wu and co-workers have cited research in which α7-antagonists such as mla show potential in cancer treatment, but this work is still in its very early stages. insecticidal action jennings and co-workers, in addition to making their key observations (see pharmacology above) about the receptor-binding of mla, found it to be toxic (50+% mortality) to the following insect species: empoasca abrupta (at 100 ppm), heliothis virescens (at 1000 ppm), musca domestica (at 1000 ppm) and spodoptera eridana (at 1000 ppm). species which were not significantly affected by mla were: anopheles quadrimaculatus, aphis fabae, diabrotica undecimpunctuata howardi and tetranychus urticae. mla also behaved as a feeding deterrent, with an lc50 of ~300 ppm, to spodoptera larvae feeding on bean leaves.