Public Policy

We might have been making things more difficult for the patients we wanted to help. This is not unknown in healthcare.

We’re already a society at risk of drowning in sciencey-sounding flapdoodle.

Drug epidemics, like other epidemics, follow a reasonably predictable pattern.

A first offense can actually represent the product of a longstanding, well-established pattern of behavior.

If you managed to turn 18 without at least some experimentation, people will assume there’s something wrong with you.

The reality is that if we’d had to rely solely on the healthcare system, a lot of people who are in recovery today would simply never have made it.

This is the sort of reasoning that leads unthinking legislators to chop funds for substance abuse services whenever there’s a budget shortfall on the horizon. It’s not based on return on investment from treatment, which research demonstrates is phenomenal.

The experience of addicts and alcoholics, particularly at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale, makes it clear that we could use more inpatient resources, not fewer.

They don’t advertise themselves as PTSD docs; they’re pot docs. Little or no mention of treatment associated with the prescription.

The notorious revolving door wasn’t entirely due to the patient’s desire to avoid change– the hospital couldn’t get them out the front door fast enough.