[lbo-talk] opium deaths?

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Fri Apr 22 12:18:46 PDT 2005


Michael Dawson:
> Take a look at this:
>
http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=0001E632-978A-1019-978A8341
> 4B7F0101

The only thing I got following this link was a CIA recruitment ad.


> Sociology has been miserable failure on this topic, IMHO. Addiction is
> proving to have a rock-solid and powerful biological basis. It is a
> disease.
>

Who says that there is no biological basis for addiction? Kelley argued for analytical distinctions among different aspects a complex phenomenon which have different effect on person's behavior and different causes.

Thus physiological addiction or withdrawal syndrome (suppression of the production of endorphins) is different from emotional craving for sensations produced by a substance. Those two addiction manifest itself differently (withdrawal subsides after about 10-10 days, emotional addiction may linger for months or even years) have different effects on behavior, and are treated differently.

Likewise, physiological effects of drug itself should be separated from the effects of its mode of delivery (injection of impurities), effects of legal treatment of drug use and social effects of drug use. These are very different effects and dumping them indiscriminately together is junk science. It may have an effect desired by puritanical moralizers but does not stand up to the standards of analytical inquiry.

So if you believe that drugs are "fucking people" and solutions not excuses are needed (which I happen to believe as well), you better be more specific who fucks whom, when, in what way, for what reason, and with what effect before we can talk about any solutions.

BTW, I do not understand your analogy to the NRA either. The NRA says a lot of things, most of it worthless propaganda, but they do have a point when we should separate gun ownership from criminal uses of guns. They are analytically separable by common sense standards - and the fact that the NRA says it does not undermine its validity in any way. It simply means that even a stopped clock shows the right time two times a day.

Wojtek



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list