Thinking About Addiction

…as one judge told me at a conference: “no matter how many jails you build, judges will fill them. It’s the easiest way to make this someone else’s problem, instead of ours.”

Much of the chronic user’s life is taken up by anxiety, about where future doses will come from.

So if some enterprising MD or PhD were to show with a proposal for research designed to prove that drinking has definite health benefits, the industry will throw money at it.

It does seem ironic that the industry most responsible for the creation and continuation of our current opioid epidemic could also be the main beneficiary of this next wave of treatment funding.

From a seller’s viewpoint, no customer is more desirable than someone who is actually dependent on their product.

…just as repeal of Prohibition didn’t make alcohol any safer for popular use… neither will legalization remove the risks associated with cannabis.

But if a community treats a correctional institution as a kind of locked flophouse, what else we can expect?

Maybe they reasoned that even if they were caught out, they could avoid the worst penalties.

“…over the past five years, less than 10% of the nearly $40 billion in tobacco payments went towards such efforts.”

Obviously, being able to give your own business a five star rating on a supposedly independent consumer website could be construed as an unfair advantage.