Posted on 06/11/2012 12:36:15 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the National Drug Control Policy, has announced a new focus on treating drug addiction as a disease, not a moral failing, and emphasizes removing the stigma placed on drug abusers.
Speaking at the Betty Ford Center in Palm Springs, Calif., on Monday, Kerlikowske declared “this country hasn’t looked at recovery in a way that makes sense,” and that he intended to “use the bully pulpit of the White House in a way that brings it out into the open.”
Previous federal drug policies were a three-legged stool, Kerlikowske said, with criminalization, prevention and treatment serving as the foundation for national policies. Now, there will be a fourth leg – recovery.
Forming the administration’s new attitude toward drug problems “meant moving beyond talking in the beltway … it meant talking to real people dealing with addiction,” Kerlikowske said.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
It is a habit. Often a deeply engraved one. But I maintain calling it a disease is shifting the responsibility away from the person.
I can catch cold, I can't catch heroin.
Was Prohibition's failure "due to corruption and misuse" or to the inherent flaws of that enterprise?
Tomorrow = 19 yrs without a drop. Are there other diseases you can quit? How about cardiovascular disease? Let’s start a Just Say No to CVD campaign. That ought to save a lot of lives.
Congrats on your sobriety milestone. Awesome!
I’m in the AA program. 260 days sober. Some of these people who say:”It may be a disease but it can be controlled by strength of character” (Post 36) are obviously not alcoholics or addicts and they have never read the Big Book of AA. where it clearly lays out the case that alcoholism is a disease.
Anyway, keep it going!
Best,
Jim
Drug addiction...
Falsification of documents...
Involvement in gun-running...
Selling out Israel...
Sending your fat wife out to tell corporations and private citizens what they can/can’t buy or eat...
Stealing from the U. S. Taxpayer to reward your cronies...
Supporting terrorist states against Israel...
Apologizing for the U. S. to foreign leaders...
Bowing on behalf of Americans to foreign leaders...
Cutting important military and technical programs...
Mingling with the domestic enemies of the U. S...
Running this nation off the road into a ditch...
Spending us into oblivion...
Blaming everything you do that’s bad, on someone else...
Sending your underage child to a foreign nation with a bunch of her friends and having U. S. Citizens pay for it...
And on and on it goes...
a disease, not a moral failing, White House says.
And so if Obama is outed for his addictions, it’s just a disease—that we as him employers can’t discrimate against him for?
Wars are not wars. Terrorists are not terrorists. Patriots are no longer patriots, they are dangerous gun packing, bible clinging rightwing crazies.
Changes in weather is Global warming, or global cooling, or climate change.
The crime of treason is no longer against the law, unless you are a conservative.
Lying is no longer lying—it’s misspeak, taken out of context, a misquote and my favorite... something to be “walked back”.
Girls are no longer girls and boys are no longer boys.
Up is down, down is up...
The end is no longer near, it has arrived.
Ok, I see where this is going. This will be Hussein’s excuse. His drug use isn’t for fun and games but a disease.
Easy for the Hopium bong interceptors to say.
Of course that's hogwash as 'doing drugs' is a willful choice. We all know full well that 'street' and some prescription drugs are addictive but often young people, in their youthful hubris, believe the warnings don't apply to them and boast: "I can handle it'. Some can but many fall into addiction and ruined lives, even early death.
The point being that it's a choice to use addictive drugs just as it's a choice to drink alcohol and allow yourself to depend on it's effects to function. Same with many other life choices, including having sex outside of wedlock and the sometime resulting pregnancy ("it just happened" often being the excuse, as if the person involved had nothing to do with it).
The 'disease' label attached to addictions is phony and meant to excuse the addict of responsibility. Just as no one blames a person with the flu for contracting the virus, how can we blame a drug/alcohol addict for 'catching' a disease? BS on stilts - and very frustrating. Yet another example of the willful abandonment of personal responsibility that government programs and bureaucracies promote and society all too eagerly embraces. This erosion of recognizing and dealing with harsh reality cannot end well for our nation.
It isn’t cancer, you frigging moron...it’s a disorder.
Every person connected to Obama is a retard of epic proportions.
The addiction process may be medical in nature, but the original decision to use the drug to begin with is a moral decision. Drug addiction is truly a life choice, every addict at some point made a choice to try drugs. Choices have consequences.
I am for federal government to get out of running our personal lives and families, period. Federal government has a particular job which is enumerated and does not include rewards and “help” for those on drugs. If we allowed personal responsibility and death on the streets for druggies-—we would eliminate the need for “war on drugs”.
Now, the states have a right to promote Virtue-—in fact, the Founding Fathers stated that was the purpose of public schools. This “Virtue” is Christian ethics and embedded in our legal system of inalienable Rights from God. This standard where Rights originate from God and NOT Barney Frank is what is destroying our country whose government is now actively redefining words, language and “Good and Evil” to the pagan/occult/Marxist ideology to destroy the Ethics that produced the Constitution .
Welfare states destroy responsibility and rewards evil behavior—it is unconstitutional anyways. Education (which is not done in schools anymore) is what it will take to destroy the dependence on drugs. We need to get government out of schools because they are just indoctrination centers teaching slaves to passion and creating addicts.
Government always is evil—always produces “evil”—that is understood by all freedom loving people-—that is why the Leviathan HAS to be LIMITED.
Only virtuous people can be free and responsible and government is not needed where you have men who are angels. Being sinful, men do need some government-—but it should always be promoting Christian Ethics because that is where the idea of individual dignity and worth and responsibility for oneself originate. Subsidiarity is a Catholic creation. These ideas, embedded in Natural Law Theory-—Rights come from God and in a “Higher Law” is totally American (and Judeo-Christian) -is what has made this country superior and more free and diverse than any other country in the history of the world.
We need to get back to creating responsible human beings and promoting Virtue which has been known for all freedom and civil societies since Plato and Aristotle. It is what made Western Civilization so superior to all ideologies.
Most recovering alcoholics would refer to alcoholism/addiction as a spiritual malady. If you limit discussion of it to a simple "nature vs. nurture" you're ultimately going to have two sides that merely condone the behavior of the addict or alcoholic. The "nature" side will excuse the practitioner as having been, "born that way." The "nurture" side would argue that a learned behavior can be unlearned. It's been my experience with more than a few years of sobriety under my belt, that until and unless one is willing to recognize the spiritual component and dimension of the dysfunction, one will never start down the path of solid recovery.
"I can catch cold, I can't catch heroin."
One of the early founders of AA was a medical doctor who likened the physiological effects of alcoholism to an allergy. It's not something you "catch", but it's something different people react to differently. Subsequent studies of alcohlics have established that their bodies and brains respond differently to alcohol than do those who are not alcoholics, so there is a physiological difference. The question, to the best of my knowledge, remains unsettled as to whether those changes are inborn or if they develop over time with the consumption of alcohol. Certainly there are some who appear to be predisposed to alcoholism.
Are they now going to hold fundraising telethons to fund the research for a cure?
Good for you buddy. One day at a time.
Andy
“Tomorrow = 19 yrs without a drop. Are there other diseases you can quit? How about cardiovascular disease?”
Eighteen years, four months and six days. This is nothing new at all. Alcoholism/drug addiction HAS been considered a disease, for decades by medical science.
Neither alcoholism, or cardiovascular disease is “quit” but rather effectively treated as well as possible.
Alcoholism/drug addiction is most effectively treated by total abstinence, just as cardiovascular disease is most effectively treated by following all doctor’s instructions, such as diet, exercise, medications, etc.
People do NOT avoid moral blame for damage done while intoxicated. The trend in California is towards making a drunk driver stand trial for murder, if he kills someone while driving.
That is the opposite from using the disease thory an excuse to avoid consequences, is a relatively legal jurisdiction.
Statistically bout one in ten people exposed to alcohol will become problem drinkers.
For an 18 year old high schooler, is being addicted to legal nicotine a smaller “sin” than being addicted to illegal (unprescribed) pain killers?
Behavior is the cause of addiction, so it is not a disease. Don’t want to be addicted? Don’t take the drugs, the booze, whatever. Enough of the excuses for misbehavior!
an impairment of the normal state of the living animal or plant body or one of its parts that interrupts or modifies the performance of the vital functions, is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms, and is a response to environmental factors (as malnutrition, industrial hazards, or climate), to specific infective agents (as worms, bacteria, or viruses), to inherent defects of the organism (as genetic anomalies), or to combinations of these factors
To me, the description of a disease being that of an "impairment of normal state..." unquestionably describes the addiction model, while the genetic anomaly condition leads to it. So, yes, it fits. I think the problem is that people, in general, like to have their own working definitions of "disease," and that's where things get hairy. And others have doubted a genetic link, but that cannot be soberly espoused these days. Right?
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