Substance abuse has emerged as a pervasive global issue affecting individuals, families, and societies across the world. Exposure to drug-related cues may evoke neural activation in brain areas associated with drug cravings in former drug addicts (FDAs), thus leading to relapse. This study examined the brain activity of FDAs towards drug-related cues and its relationship to the level of subjective craving. Twenty FDAs and 23 gender-matched healthy controls (HCs) performed a functional MRI (fMRI) task, where they viewed a series of drug-related cues interleaved with baseline images. Participants’ subjective drug craving scores were acquired using a visual analogue scale (VAS) before and immediately after the fMRI scans. The fMRI data were pre-processed and analysed in Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM12). Brain activation maps were generated using fixed and random effect analyses. The number of activated voxels (NOV) was correlated with VAS using a Spearman rank correlation. The statistical significance level was set at P < .05. Whole-brain analysis showed significant cortical activity in the inferior occipital gyrus, middle occipital gyrus, occipital pole, calcarine cortex, inferior temporal gyrus, occipital fusiform gyrus, fusiform gyrus, and thalamus proper. However, the results did not reveal any brain areas significantly differentially activated between groups at a stringent threshold of PFWE < .05. Additionally, the correlation between the NOV and VAS was not significant. This study provides new evidence that the brains of FDAs do not show significant responses to drug-related cues, implying that they may not be affected by visual drug-related cues upon completing rehabilitation programmes.