Should Addiction Illegal Substances be Treated as a Disease or Crime?

[SkepticThinker]

Still don't see anything that qualifies addiction

Then I'm glad you're not a doctor.

Addiction disrupts the normal functioning of the brain and the body.

 

[I.S.L.A.M617]

Then I'm glad you're not a doctor.

Addiction disrupts the normal functioning of the brain and the body.

So does being high or drunk, inhaling helium, electrocution, and death. Yet none of these things are considered diseases.

 

[SkepticThinker]

So does being high or drunk, inhaling helium, electrocution, and death. Yet none of these things are considered diseases.

Your brain gets re-wired when you're addicted to something and neurochemical processes are interrupted and altered. It changes the way your nerve cells process information. It changes in ways that foster further abuse of the addicted substance and hinders one's ability to resist the addiction because the "reward" systems of the brain become overstimulated (we need this reward system to survive). Cognitive functioning, movement and emotion become impaired and the brain's motivation center gets reorganized. All of these things create a physical dependency to the abused substance. Withdrawal from the abused substance causes physical pain, depression, dangerous behavior and even death.

What does that sound like to you?

 

[I.S.L.A.M617]

Your brain gets re-wired when you're addicted to something and neurochemical processes are interrupted and altered. It changes the way your nerve cells process information. It changes in ways that foster further abuse of the addicted substance and hinders one's ability to resist the addiction because the "reward" systems of the brain become overstimulated (we need this reward system to survive). Cognitive functioning, movement and emotion become impaired and the brain's motivation center gets reorganized. All of these things create a physical dependency to the abused substance. Withdrawal from the abused substance causes physical pain, depression, dangerous behavior and even death.

What does that sound like to you?

Self-inflicted harm... Addiction is no more a disease than suicide is.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Self-inflicted harm... Addiction is no more a disease than suicide is.

Then you're just wrong.

Heart disease can be self-inflicted too, using this rationale. Does that mean it's not a disease?

 

[I.S.L.A.M617]

Then you're just wrong.

Heart disease can be self-inflicted too, using this rationale. Does that mean it's not a disease?

Heart disease is a very broad term. If by "heart disease" you mean eating so much food that your arteries clog up and your heart fails, then no, I wouldn't consider that a disease.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Heart disease is a very broad term. If by "heart disease" you mean eating so much food that your arteries clog up and your heart fails, then no, I wouldn't consider that a disease.

I'm sorry to have to be the one to inform you that scientific and medical facts aren't determined by your personal opinions.

 

[I.S.L.A.M617]

I'm sorry to have to be the one to inform you that scientific and medical facts aren't determined by your personal opinions.

Never said they were, but medical definitions are constantly changing based on new studies, and also not every expert in the medical field considers addiction a disease; not even a majority of them. Just recently they labeled obesity a disease, which I find just as ridiculous as the addiction label.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

I think it was Portugal but don't hold me to that... but It was some country in Europe that de-criminalized (not legalized) the vast majority of addictive drugs and treated it as a health issue instead of a criminal issue and within a short time they decreased the Drug usage by 40%. So I would assume this is the better answer. Though there still needs to be harsh consequences for those that sell and traffic. Its a messy subject and I don't claim to have the answer but sending someone to prison for the rest of their lives for using drugs instead of rehabilitation seems to be borderline stupidity.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Never said they were, but medical definitions are constantly changing based on new studies, and also not every expert in the medical field considers addiction a disease; not even a majority of them. Just recently they labeled obesity a disease, which I find just as ridiculous as the addiction label.

Yeah, that's why addiction is now viewed as a disease.

Go learn how the reward and craving centres of the brain work and what happens when they're damaged defective or abnormal; the genetic, developmental and environmental factors that are involved; how the brain changes when its addicted to something; and how the body's physiology is affected by addiction, and maybe then you'll be qualified to give a medical opinion on the subject. And maybe you'll realize there's a lot more than mere "weakness" involved in the addiction process.

 

[I.S.L.A.M617]

Yeah, that's why addiction is now viewed as a disease.

Go learn how the reward and craving centres of the brain work and what happens when they're damaged defective or abnormal; the genetic, developmental and environmental factors that are involved; how the brain changes when its addicted to something; and how the body's physiology is affected by addiction, and maybe then you'll be qualified to give a medical opinion on the subject. And maybe you'll realize there's a lot more than mere "weakness" involved in the addiction process.

Regarding the definition of addiction as a disease:

What it doesn’t explain is spontaneous recovery. True, you get spontaneous recovery with medical diseases…but not very often, especially with serious ones. Yet many if not most addicts get better by themselves, without medically prescribed treatment, without going to AA or NA, and often after leaving inadequate treatment programs and getting more creative with their personal issues. For example, alcoholics (which can be defined in various ways) recover “naturally” (independent of treatment) at a rate of 50-80% depending on your choice of statistics (but see this link for a good example). For many of these individuals, recovery is best described as a developmental process — a change in their motivation to obtain the substance of choice, a change in their capacity to control their thoughts and feelings, and/or a change in contextual (e.g., social, economic) factors that get them to work hard at overcoming their addiction. In fact, most people beat addiction by working really hard at it. If only we could say the same about medical diseases!

-From Why Addiction is NOT a Brain Disease | Mind the Brain by Marc Lewis, PhD

The logic is that addiction is not a disease, because unlike actual mental disorders, no medical treatment is required to beat it; and more often then not is not a factor. You can't say the same about schizophrenia, manic-depressive disorder, or other real mental diseases which require prescribed medical treatment for improvement of condition.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

You can't say the same about schizophrenia, manic-depressive disorder, or other real mental diseases which require prescribed medical treatment for improvement of condition.

You can, actually. Or rather, people have. The most outspoken (among those with actual qualifications), Thomas Szasz is probably the most ardent (and radical) critics, but almost everybody in the mental health sciences other than hardcore psychiatrists at least in part reject the economic and unsubstantiated move made by a collection of key psychiatrists in 80s to try to turn psychiatry into a diagnostic medical field without having anything other than a symptom cluster methodology to support them.

 

[LuisDantas]

Indeed. It is rather clear that mental disease is often recovered from, to the point that symptom relief due to aging is well known of.

If anything, avoiding psychoactive drugs / medicines is often helpful with recovery.

 

[ZooGirl02]

I personally believe that buying, selling, trafficking, and using illegal drugs should be treated as a crime. I believe the addiction should be treated as a disease. It is also my personal opinion that addicts of illegal drugs should be given some sort of help to get off of the illegal drugs. If they need financial help to go through a detox or rehab program then I believe that there ought to be some sort of funding from state, federal, or local governments to help them with that. After all, in my opinion if we are going to break the cycle of illegal drug usage, selling, trafficking, and buying in our nation then we need to help the addicts to recover from their addictions and live clean lives so they can be well functioning members of society.

 

[yoda89]

I personally believe that buying, selling, trafficking, and using illegal drugs should be treated as a crime. I believe the addiction should be treated as a disease. It is also my personal opinion that addicts of illegal drugs should be given some sort of help to get off of the illegal drugs. If they need financial help to go through a detox or rehab program then I believe that there ought to be some sort of funding from state, federal, or local governments to help them with that. After all, in my opinion if we are going to break the cycle of illegal drug usage, selling, trafficking, and buying in our nation then we need to help the addicts to recover from their addictions and live clean lives so they can be well functioning members of society.

I personally believe that all drugs should be legal. However agree with many of you that dependency should be labelized as disease. Why should all be legal you ask? Well. Lets go into some that are legal. Alcohol and tobacco are not illegal. Yet last time I checked both create high decency and harm ones body. Causing numerouse medical problems including cancer, heart disease, depression the list goes on and on. Yet they are legal. So what makes them legal. Well, huge lobbies up in the nations capital. They don't want competition. So if all harmful substances should be illegal. Why are not these? They are very harmful to others causing both drunk driving killings and second hand. But these are the okay drugs.

Now lets take an illegal drug. I dunno let's use marijuana the bane of mankind. A drug that is has healing properties. Allowing cancer patients to get through pain. A drug when vaporized is not physically harmful nor addictive. I will say one can become emotional depended on and I've seen it. But i have also seen it emotional dependence with video games such as world of warcraft and call of duty. Yet it is illegal costing in total trillions of dollars since the war on drugs began. Who uses it well our founding fathers who also used also used hemp another product of of the marijauana plant. The Decleration of Indenpence was written on hemp. Every good rock band, rapper and country star has have ever created, innovations and discovers have deprived from its usage. Yet it is illegal

So my question to you and everyone on the thread or reading this. Why are some harmful substances allowed yet others not. It's hypocritical and a violation of our freedom of choice.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

It has been shown that treating it as a disease works infinitly better than capital punishment. I don't even see the debate.

 

[yoda89]

I agree with you in principle but one of the problems with this approach is that tax-payers will have to foot the bill for the inevitable treatment the the hard core users will require. I believe we ought to legalize drugs with this caveat: We (tax-payers) will pay for one-and one only- rehab or drug related treatment episode. After that we will allow you to die in the street. Harsh, I know, but to allow total freedom for people also transfers total responsibility.

That's some goodwill if I do say myself. No matter what it takes if they are willing to go to a place to get help again so be it. Matthew Perry just turned his house into a sober living facility. He slipped many a time do you throw him out on the street? Yes there will be be medical treatments, just like there are for alchol and tabacco right now but the taxes will far outweigh those treatments Plus right not we dont get anything back from the war on drugs. Have you even smoked some yoda to
know?

 

[gnomon]

I personally believe it is somewhere in the middle; narcotics and other 'drugs' are not only harmful to the self but also to society, and there should be punishment for buying, selling, and using them. However I also think that it is a problem that most people cannot overcome without help. Now the question is how the government (doesn't matter what country) should do in the terms of dealing with addicts, (or anyone under the influence, and unable to stop using said substances)

It's not a simple issue.

Look at it from a cost benefit analysis. We spend far more money per individual when it comes to law enforcement and detainment than it takes to treat an individual. A bonus is that individuals being treated get to retain personal property and employment while being treated. Thus they continue to contribute to the economy as a whole.

There is a serious problem with the disease concept of addiction. There is no denying the health aspect of addiction to chemical substances. The problem is that the disease theory of alcoholism which is generally applied across the board to all chemical substances is not a scientific concept. The theory as practiced in the recovery community is based on the Alcoholics Anonymous concept of the disease theory which, once you get past all the posturing, is a spiritually based concept. Not a scientific one.

Who is an addict? How is the addict defined? By assumption. So right now the disease concept in treatment relies on the notion that an individual is spiritually unfit, diagnosis is self determined and recovery is self defined. None of that works with any other medical notion of disease. It doesn't even fit in with psychiatric illnesses.

Yet proper treatment works better than incarceration and would probably benefit society as a whole. There's a certain humbling process in treatment that can work as a social shaming factor as well as an educational process teaching people new behaviors. As well, individuals with severe underlying psychiatric illnesses are far more likely to get proper treatment outside of a jail or prison.

There is actually much to the treatment issue that should be it's own topic. The false notion of the reliability of 12 step groups, how the "spiritual" disease model of addiction can actually hinder treatment, the civil rights issue of forced treatment, etc.

As far as the enforcement issue I think we need to look at each substance and weigh them in a rational manner. Decriminalizing the manufacture, sale and use of substances such as marijuana where the cost of enforcement grossly outstrips any benefit but maintaining enforcement against the production of meth which poses a danger merely in it's production would be examples of making rational distinctions rather than stating "all drugs legal" or "all drugs criminalized". Those two positions are pointless and get us nowhere.

I personally favor going through the drug schedule and allowing for the regulated sale and manufacture of certain substances, a rescheduling of others and many policy changes in regards to law enforcement such as respecting the Castle Doctrine and private property. I think state funded treatment, even to the point of providing the homeless who often have chemical addiction with free homes, would actually save all of us money in the long term.

edit: I wish to clarify this disease issue in how I am discussing it. I'm referring to how it is put into practice by the majority of treatment facilities based upon the AA model of disease. Yes addiction falls under the general definition. There is a different definition in practice. Unless the model in treatment has changed within the last decade which I have not seen evidence that it has changed.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

It has been shown that treating it as a disease works infinitly better than capital punishment.

Of course. But why are these the only 2 options? Disease or death?

 

[Monk Of Reason]

Of course. But why are these the only 2 options? Disease or death?

Quite true. I'm just remarking that countries that have taken the approach of treating it as a health problem rather than capital punishment have had much better results. If there is another way that seems to have more evidence that it works better then I'm all for that one. Though capital punishment to begin with doesn't work. Perhaps you can elaborate more on it than I can but isn't this somewhat in the root of why spanking a child doesn't work and is one of the least effective ways to dicipline children?