Believe it or not, this is not a partisan commentary. The fact is that Democrats are typically more supportive of drug rehab while Republicans have been more prone to incarcerate non-violent drug offenders. Somewhere in the middle there is a solution, but it hasn’t been fully recognized yet.
Last year Senator Joseph Biden (D) of Delaware introduced a bill to change the National Institute on Drug Abuse to the National Institute on Diseases of Addiction. This was a mis-informed effort to force theory and not actual science onto the American public. With more than 20 million people in our country struggling to overcome addiction, this would include roughly 8% of the population to be suddently classified as having an incurable brain disease, which is simply not true.
Now that Senator Biden will be occupying the post of Vice President come January, will he continue with this rediculous and demoralizing label? As a former addict myself, this would be an attempt to retroactively pigeonhole me into something that doesn’t even come close to describing me. How democratic or presidential is that?
The fact remains that addiction has never been conclusively proven to be a neurological disorder, a genetic disorder or any other type of disease. On the flip side, very normal people like me have completely overcome addiction either with or without treatment and have had no further symptoms or relapses and not a single test could conclude that we are currently or ever have been afflicted with that “disease”.
I do hope that the VP-Elect will continue to support addiction treatment and prevention practices, however he must take into account the NEW FACE of RECOVERY – those who have permanently put substance abuse behind them forever and include this fact in his legislative activities.