Tag

drug addiction

What is Drug Addiction?

August 10, 2019

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) believes that drug addiction exists, while the psychiatrist’s handbook, the DSM 5, doesn’t use the term. The public and their political representatives believe addiction to be a major problem. Though there’s no reason to think they understand the issue any better than the doctors who make a living […]

Addiction and Disease

October 24, 2018

Drug addiction has received extraordinary attention over recent years to the point where politicians have become interested in the problem. This is a sure sign that a real problem will be the subject of a lot of muddle headed thinking. For the past three decades or so addiction has been held to be a disease. […]

Random Thoughts on Addiction, the Stock Market, and Gerbils on a Wheel

July 30, 2017

Having changed the definition of sex, gender, marriage, pronouns, speech, health, victory, defeat, money, bullying, poverty, success, dress, fake news, children, and height, I thought a few ruminations on smoking, addiction, and whatever free association could bring to mind might fill a few paragraphs. On Friday July 28 the FDA announced a comprehensive regulatory plan […]

Random Thoughts on Addiction, the Stock Market, and Gerbils on a Wheel

The Opioid Epidemic

June 30, 2017

There seems to be no end of mischief that the government can do when it plunges into the quicksand of American medicine. Let’s consider the opioid epidemic. It appears that deaths from opioid overdose have sharply increased in this country. Let’s also grant that this surge in deaths is exactly the way it’s portrayed in […]

June 6, 2011

The current debate over how Medicare should be structured has seemed to me to be nothing more than each side declaring that their federally funded healthcare program is better than the other side’s. Paul Ryan’s plan to make Medicare (10 years hence) into a voucher system has been hailed by many as a serious and responsible modification […]

Social Welfare Programs and Drug Addiction

Cocaine and Addiction

May 31, 2009

I chanced upon this article. Its subject is the advisability of legalizing marijuana. It’s at the usual level of coherence that typifies public discussion of the subject. It sees no conflict between an individual’s right to engage in behavior that harms only himself and society’s right to stop him, indeed to lock him up for […]