Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

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Belinda
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Re: Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

Post by Belinda »

Togo1 wrote:
That sounds very much like a judgement to me.
Well, yes. Okay, I meant a moral not a pragmatic judgement. The professional does of course make pragmatic judgments, evaluating prognoses, practical abilities, or even aesthetic judgments, but should not make moral judgments. I suppose an exception to this is the professional judge who might be expected to say for instance "You have been a very horrible criminal" or something to that effect, however the judge is in the punishment business .

I agree that there is a social solidarity element in drug taking as when the addict feels encouraged by a peer group the members of which all enjoy drugs. Maybe some addicts who very much need to belong to a peer group have to get into some other group that don't abuse drugs. Not everyone has a great need to belong, and the person who is able to make autonomous decisions is arguably better placed to discontinue drug taking.
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Sanchez
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Re: Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

Post by Sanchez »

Belinda wrote: My stance on the matter of the 'disease model' is that it implies for the part of professionals the attitude of professional detachment, which means in practice that the addiction professionals are not judgmental but simply practical. True, the wider society is judgmental towards addicts and Chavez will perhaps tell us if an addict cares about the attitude of the wider society; does an addict feel lonely and isolated as an addict and want to join the non-drug-abusing majority?
There are those addicts who have become fatalistic and given up, but in most cases there is a desire to become a normal person. Addiction is a love/hate-relationship with a pleasurable substance or activity, so there are two competing mindsets present within the addict. In the hate mindset, the addict desperately wants to change and in the love mindset he cannot see why life without the fix would be worth it. One of the bad sides of treatment is that it gives the option of never resolving this conflict. Addicts can stay sober when they feel like it, and go back to using as long as they call it a relapse (implying that it is a sign of a disease) or a slip (implying that they used by accident). It's a way of having your cake and eating it too. What's worse, to the outside world and the addict himself, this cycle seems to confirm just how bad his disease is, since even treatment hasn't completely prevented him from using.
Belinda wrote: If not, then there is not much use in any professional's taking that line with her.
Here lies the difference between our views: you seem to think that how addicts should be treated is determined solely by what helps the addict the most. While I feel that taking a hard stance on addiction is also the most effective way, there is another way of defending it. Society has two options: it can either accommodate the addiction or expect the reverse, i.e. the addict has to accommodate to the needs of the people around him. Maybe it will help addicts if their families believe themselves partially responsible for using, seeing themselves as "triggering" the use. What this means in both theory and practice, is that some responsibility has been shifted away from the addict and on to someone else. In the deterministic view this makes sense, because there's no logical inconsistency about holding others partially responsible for the addicts use. But let's be clear. If abstinence is not required from the addict, others have to accommodate the addiction. Often this happens in families of addicts, where their whole lives revolve around the addiction of one family member. This isn't right, because it punishes others, forcing the family to live in constant doubt and fear, while the addict has to make no commitment to abstinence, and as I pointed out above, reserves the right to use again.
Belinda wrote: My support for, let's call it the 'disability model' , of substance abuse is entirely about the need for professionals working in that field to be non-judgmental. This contention between Chavez and I started in a thread about determinism. I, as a determinist, claimed and claim that in order to be non-judgmental the professional needs to believe that assuming responsibility for oneself depends upon whether or not the addict has strength of character. Character strength does not arise newly formed but is caused either by life experience or genetic inheritance, and if the professional were to believe that the addict can simply choose according to something called 'Free Will' then the professional would be justified in blaming the addict.
I'm sure you agree that addicts aren't any more or any less determined than anyone else, so the truth or falsity of determinism is irrelevant for the purpose of this discussion. The question is whether addicts deserve to be treated differently than any person who engages in harmful behavior. You seemed to get fixated on the question of blame. The question can be re-phrased like this: are the people around the addict justified if they demand him to either quit or get out of their lives? Under the disease model, it seems not; the person is sick and cutting contact because of this is not just cruel, but based on a lack of understanding. Under the moral model I promote, zero-tolerance is completely logical. Not necessarily because it makes the addict quit, but at least no one else has to live under the reign of terror of the addict.

I fear that the disability model is just a new word for the disease model. It seems to accept at face value the claim that the addict cannot behave himself or at least requires a period of "working on the problem" before doing so. This seems dubious since addicts cling to this supposed lack of control precisely because of the way it justifies using. It's interesting that addicts rarely apply this lack of control to other areas of life: even the Big Book of AA states that addicts can have quite a lot of self-discipline, patience and willpower in other areas of life. It's an interesting coincidence that the one thing they can't control is the one thing they enjoy the most.

This is really the essence of my argument: nobody should accept and accommodate the claim of being unable to quit, or at the very least the burden should be on the addict to prove that this is the case. Your view seems thoroughly addict-centered; the decision of whether to adopt a hard stance is based on how the addict feels about this. I think that if the ethical code of professionals prevents them from making moral judgments, then those people shouldn't deal with addiction at all, or deal only with the medical consequences of addiction. My argument is that addiction is a moral issue, that medical professionals aren't meant to deal with moral issues and therefore addiction is not treatable.
Belinda
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Re: Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

Post by Belinda »

Chavez wrote:

Here lies the difference between our views: you seem to think that how addicts should be treated is determined solely by what helps the addict the most. While I feel that taking a hard stance on addiction is also the most effective way, there is another way of defending it. Society has two options: it can either accommodate the addiction or expect the reverse, i.e. the addict has to accommodate to the needs of the people around him. Maybe it will help addicts if their families believe themselves partially responsible for using, seeing themselves as "triggering" the use. What this means in both theory and practice, is that some responsibility has been shifted away from the addict and on to someone else. In the deterministic view this makes sense, because there's no logical inconsistency about holding others partially responsible for the addicts use. But let's be clear. If abstinence is not required from the addict, others have to accommodate the addiction. Often this happens in families of addicts, where their whole lives revolve around the addiction of one family member. This isn't right, because it punishes others, forcing the family to live in constant doubt and fear, while the addict has to make no commitment to abstinence, and as I pointed out above, reserves the right to use again.
I am on the verge of according the stronger argument to Chavez. I do however wish that Chavez would concur that determinism is the basis for how the addict can learn from the disapproval, disdain, and outright blame of family and therapists.

If responsibility for her behaviour remains firmly attached to the addict the addict is thereby causedto be more likely comply with her family's and therapists' norms. This is what Chavez seems to me to be claiming, and I agree.

The therapist or educator implicitly disapproves of the addict's behaviour. The therapist however for the sake of , not only the addict, but also the addict's family and the wider society needs to find the most effective means of stopping the addict's addiction. Blaming is a waste of time because the addict well knows that the therapist disapproves and despises addiction, and it would be strange indeed if the addict thought that the therapist approved of her addiction! The therapist detaches himself from the emotion of disgust in order to get an insight into the causes of the addiction( determinism again).

To address the causes of the addiction, and unhealthy attachment to pleasure-seeking is a major cause, the therapist has if possible to educate the addict into appreciating longer term benefits. On the other hand, I can well imagine some addicts who can respond only to an authoritarian "You will never take another drink for the remainder of your life." My old friend, now dead, told me that a therapist told her this. Knowing her I think that reasoning with her would not have worked but she did respect authority.

I select for special attention part of what Chavez wrote:
What this means in both theory and practice, is that some responsibility has been shifted away from the addict and on to someone else. In the deterministic view this makes sense, because there's no logical inconsistency about holding others partially responsible for the addicts use. But let's be clear. If abstinence is not required from the addict, others have to accommodate the addiction. Often this happens in families of addicts, where their whole lives revolve around the addiction of one family member. This isn't right, because it punishes others, forcing the family to live in constant doubt and fear, while the addict has to make no commitment to abstinence, and as I pointed out above, reserves the right to use again.
Determinism pervades the whole of this from Chavez. Chavez is balancing pros and cons , an activity which depends upon causes and effects as does determinism. I admit that Free Will is also a cause which results in effects . However Chavez's reasoning owes nothing to Free Will and everything to determinism. If Chavez were to be relying on Free Will, Chavez would not trouble to weigh up pros and cons but would simplistically bang on about will power, which he is not doing.
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Wilson
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Re: Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

Post by Wilson »

Belinda, I agree with the concept that everything we do is the result of determinism - in theory. I just don't think that it has any relevance in our actual lives.

Let me ask you this: Do you feel that no one is responsible for what he does? That we shouldn't get angry at anyone?
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Devil_49
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Re: Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

Post by Devil_49 »

Why does the question of treatment arise? Is this a public health or a morality issue? Is the treatment proposed to address a physical or a psychological problem?
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Sy Borg
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Re: Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

Post by Sy Borg »

I have been addicted to something all my life. I was probably already dependent on nicotine during gestation. I believe in freedom of choice. We are not all chemically the same and our bodies respond differently. I wonder about the reaction if alcohol, caffeine and high sugar junk foods were outlawed. Most people who judge "drug addicts" are drug addicts themselves.

Are any examples of societies being significantly damaged by unchecked drug addiction without the added complexities caused by prohibition?
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated—Gandhi.
Sanchez
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Re: Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

Post by Sanchez »

Greta wrote:I have been addicted to something all my life. I was probably already dependent on nicotine during gestation. I believe in freedom of choice. We are not all chemically the same and our bodies respond differently. I wonder about the reaction if alcohol, caffeine and high sugar junk foods were outlawed. Most people who judge "drug addicts" are drug addicts themselves.

Are any examples of societies being significantly damaged by unchecked drug addiction without the added complexities caused by prohibition?
Yes, most societies. It's a common belief that it really is the prohibition of narcotics that create the problem. Alcohol is legal and alcoholism causes major problems. Cigarettes contribute to cancer and other health problems, not just for the smoker, but through second-hand smoke as well. The desire to legalize is largely driven by the attitude I described earlier, that society should just accept the addicts' claims of not being able to stop and should accommodate the addiction. In some countries the government has actually started paying for the drugs, so the junkies wouldn't commit crimes to get them. This is insane. It's not about freedom of choice, it's about using addictions to blackmail the society ("If you don't give us the dope, we'll terrorize you and you'll be responsible for the mayhem").

I also believe in freedom of choice. I believe that once addiction gets bad enough, people around the addict can choose to cut all ties to him to protect themselves from the addiction. This might motivate him to quit, but even if it doesn't, at least there are fewer people around to be damaged. Obviously the addict also has freedom of choice, but he shouldn't expect anyone to accommodate the habit.
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Re: Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

Post by Wilson »

Sanchez wrote:The desire to legalize is largely driven by the attitude I described earlier, that society should just accept the addicts' claims of not being able to stop and should accommodate the addiction.
Not sure that's true. There are certainly good arguments - logical arguments - for legalizing certain drugs in certain ways. The war on marijuana, for example, hasn't accomplished much except to make some suppliers obscenely rich, put a lot of people in jail, and cost the taxpayers a ton of money. The nation is moving - appropriately, I think - to decriminalize marijuana use and move it into the economic mainstream.

Certainly opiates, cocaine, and meth are different animals. Even there, I'm not sure that putting people in jail for using makes much sense. I am in favor of jailing producers and significant suppliers, though. Those are just too dangerous - to the users and to the society they live in - to do anything to advance their spread. To me, the idea of totally legalizing all drugs - including allowing suppliers to operate without the danger of jail time - is crazy.
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Re: Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

Post by Belinda »

Wilson wrote:
Let me ask you this: Do you feel that no one is responsible for what he does? That we shouldn't get angry at anyone?
These are two unrelated questions. As a determinist I feel that the more that a person takes responsibility for herself and others the more she is free . If she takes responsibility as well as she can she will have applied her mind and the best of knowledge available to the facts of the case for which she is taking responsibility. For instance if she has a problem about being a timid person she will try to find out how to address her fears psychologically and practically; addressing the fears involves finding out what causes her fears, and finding out how to live with them if she has to. A determinist faces up to reality as well as she can.

I try, Wilson. :roll:

As a philosopher , a determinist philosopher sitting calmly in front of a peaceful keyboard in safety and security etc. I claim that we shouldn't get angry at anyone. This not getting angry at anyone would be emotional flatness. No passions whatsoever. It's never going to happen in real life. But it is a good ideal to hold to in most circumstances. One circumstance when anger isjustified and justifiable is when the anger is put to use to right wrongs. Don't you think so?
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Ormond
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Re: Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

Post by Ormond »

I suspect that coerced treatment of addicts wouldn't work. I claim no expertise here, but don't people have to want to change their life in order to kick these habits?

I find a focus on addicts to be somewhat odd. I prefer a focus on suppliers. The tobacco industry has been killing about 400,000 Americans each and every year for decades, and many more around the world. Why focus on this or that addict when we have such a huge target rich environment as the tobacco industry?

We are a strange species indeed.

1) Osama bin Laden kills 3,000 Americans and we launch two wars costing at least a couple TRILLION dollars.

2) Meanwhile, the tobacco industry kills about 1,000 Americans every day of the year, their business is fully legal, and as the following discussion will undoubtedly demonstrate we love to rationalize this murderous business model by shifting the blame to the customers.

I doubt we are even capable of having an intelligent discussion on the topic of addiction, let alone curing it.
If the things we want to hear could take us where we want to go, we'd already be there.
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Re: Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

Post by Supine »

Helena visconti wrote:Dear collegues,

I am writing a paper on a specific issue ("freedom and treatments for drug addicts"). We are talking about very heavy drugs like heroin NOT cannabis et cetera. The issue is the following:

Should some sort of treatment be enforced on the drug addict (coerced treatments) or should the addict be totally free to decide wheter he wants to have a treatment or not? We are talking about psychotherapeutic treatments with the aim to cope with life and the aim to eventually come out of drug addiction.

Why is the question problematic?

I am referring to the two concepts of liberty (see Berlin´s paper with regards to it): positive freedom and negative freedom. To refresh memories:
Negative freedom asserts that freedom is the absence of restrictions. In this sense a coerced treatment would be a massive invasion of personal freedom and thus maybe ethically not justifiable. "Positive liberty is the possibility of acting — or the fact of acting — in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes" (quoting the Plato Standord entry on "Positive and Begative Liberty"). (I hope you don´t bother the sloppy citation style for this purpose here). To make a classical example: even if the child doesn´t want to go to school, he is forced to do so, and in the future he will be happy for it, because he gained freedom. Without education you would be the slave of others opinions and rhetorical capacities. In this sense, enforcing a treatment, even though the addict may dislike it at the start, is much more justifiable, because you are assuring his freedom in the future, where he or she is not anymore a slave of the "drugs will".

So what do you think? Is some sort of coerced treatment better or worse than full liberal choice?

(Note: With coerced treatment I don´t mean something radical in the sense of either that or something bad happens to you. I think you can find nice ways to "nicely enforce", assuring that the addict is not stigmatized, that he is not seen as a problem, etc.. Maybe some of you heard of "drug-accepting approach" in social work. I would implement that with a mandatory group therapy (or single therapy)).
I'm familiar with the concepts of "negative" vs "positive" liberty/freedom having taken a philosophy class on political freedom at a local university here in Milwaukee, WI.

I'm also a crack cocaine drug addict. Or, to use more physiologically positive "self talk," a recovering drug addict.

Some would say I'm duel-addicted to alcohol. Part of the evidence for that might be frequent black-outs including the one in which I was shot multiple (3) times by a Milwaukee police officer.

Drug addiction--substance addiction (which includes alcohol)--"destroys" lives. The term "destroy" is a bit subjective but imagine heterosexuality increasing your odds of acquiring Herpes and discrimination in the workplace being institutionalized (like drugs are via zero tolerance urine analyses) to effectively keep heterosexuals unemployed and desperate. Then yeah, heterosexuality would "destroy" your life too.

"Positive" liberty/freedom is a conception of freedom that religions have. Like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and so forth. Because an individual can not know or determine if they are free but only a higher human authority or a collective opinion of a populace can know and determine for you if you are free and have obtained "self realization." Ergo, the image of the man locked behind prison bars being "free" as a popular symbol in positive freedom. Positive freedom also uses the drug addict as an example of a a person lacking freedom. "freedom" or "liberty" is wholly internal in the concept of positive freedom.

"Negative" freedom is entirely external--from coercive forces. The libertarians are supposedly the harbingers of negative freedom. Not so sure if the socialist libertarians like the Islamic YPG Kurds (fighting ISIS) are or not. Traditional Catholic economic views tend toward a socialist libertarianism.

I favor the path of socialist Portugal on drugs and drug addiction. They are decriminalized but not legalized. Actually, I would favor legalization too snatch the financial power from the cartels and street gangs the way ending alcohol prohibition stopped the mafia from drive-by machine gunning and bombing people over alcohol territory/profit disputes. In New York City in one year in the 1920's roughly 700 New Yorkers died (OD'd) on bootleg alcohol that was poisonous because illegal substances can't be regulated. Now, imagine 700 New Yorkers in the year 2016 over dosing on contaminated/poisonous heroin, even with a far more massive population in NYC today? There would be hysteria and calls for a deeper "war on drugs."

Relative to crack cocaine both alcohol and male-on-male sodomy are FAR MORE detrimental to a persons health (over long term). Alcohol is actually far worse than IV heroin use according to medical professionals. Alcoholism comes with dementia ("wet brain") and alcoholic hepatitis. Currently, prescription opiates (pain pills) addictions in the USA results in more OD's than cocaine and heroin OD's COMBINED.

I see American pill addicts trying to get off the pills. It's like withdrawal from IV heroin for them. Both far worse than withdrawal from crack cocaine. And several stage alcoholism is the worst causing hallucinations and potential seizures and deaths.

No. drug addicts should not be forced into rehab. If Prince was a pill popper he certainly outclassed 99% of Americans in creativity and productivity. You want to force homosexuals into rehab for their own chemical addiction to enjoying a penis injuring their anus over years and the HIV and tax-payer funded HIV meds that come with that?

Like homosexuals not every drug addict has the stereotypical "worst" case story on earth. You wouldn't even know--in passing--I was a crack addict, dressing better than most non-addicts, dealers, and scoring A's on my college exams. You would only know if you got to know me better.
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Re: Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

Post by Sanchez »

Wilson wrote:
Sanchez wrote:The desire to legalize is largely driven by the attitude I described earlier, that society should just accept the addicts' claims of not being able to stop and should accommodate the addiction.
Not sure that's true. There are certainly good arguments - logical arguments - for legalizing certain drugs in certain ways. The war on marijuana, for example, hasn't accomplished much except to make some suppliers obscenely rich, put a lot of people in jail, and cost the taxpayers a ton of money. The nation is moving - appropriately, I think - to decriminalize marijuana use and move it into the economic mainstream.

Certainly opiates, cocaine, and meth are different animals. Even there, I'm not sure that putting people in jail for using makes much sense. I am in favor of jailing producers and significant suppliers, though. Those are just too dangerous - to the users and to the society they live in - to do anything to advance their spread. To me, the idea of totally legalizing all drugs - including allowing suppliers to operate without the danger of jail time - is crazy.
I admit that my response to Greta was awful. Let's give this another try. There are two motives for drug legalization; 1) the liberal notion that taking drugs is an innocent act (a view I don't completely reject). 2) the "harm reduction" philosophy which is fatalistic and based on the assumption that addicts are hopeless. The latter is largely a result of ineffective "treatment."

I don't support the War on Drugs and I do agree that prohibition has a lot of problems, the market it opens for organized crime being the biggest one. But the idea that the problems associated with substance abuse are the results of prohibition is insane. If that were the case, alcohol would be essentially harmless, since it's legal in most countries and deeply ingrained in the culture, to the point where teetotalers are sometimes viewed with suspicion. Yet people in these countries do drink themselves to death, or kill others by driving drunk, or ruin the lives of their families.

I don't oppose drug use itself and it is hard to make a case that self-intoxication would be inherently wrong. However, when a person has created a pattern of destructive use, it certainly becomes a moral issue. If one is prone to violence when intoxicated, how could it not be morally questionable to intoxicate? It's a hedonistic gamble on the well-being of others. The blame I place on addicts is no different from the blame I would place on anybody who acted similarly. It's just a product of our liberal culture that holding drug users accountable for the results of their use is seen as something horribly intolerant. Greta tried to argue that I cannot judge drunk driving if I keep eating chocolate. There is nothing inherently wrong about being addicted, but not all addictions are equal and when use starts to hurt people around the addict, it ceases to be just a personal issue. The amount of responsibility is a constant. Responsibility cannot eliminated, it can only be shifted to others which has been the trend in recent decades.
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Re: Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

Post by Wilson »

Sanchez wrote:There are two motives for drug legalization; 1) the liberal notion that taking drugs is an innocent act (a view I don't completely reject). 2) the "harm reduction" philosophy which is fatalistic and based on the assumption that addicts are hopeless. The latter is largely a result of ineffective "treatment."

I don't support the War on Drugs and I do agree that prohibition has a lot of problems, the market it opens for organized crime being the biggest one. But the idea that the problems associated with substance abuse are the results of prohibition is insane.
There's also the economic and practical motive - that the drug war is expensive and ineffective and on balance causes more harm than good. I think you've made a very effective argument against the idea that prohibition is the cause of substance abuse with the examples of liquor and cigarettes, and I certainly agree.
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Re: Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

Post by LuckyR »

Helena visconti wrote:Dear collegues,

I am writing a paper on a specific issue ("freedom and treatments for drug addicts"). We are talking about very heavy drugs like heroin NOT cannabis et cetera. The issue is the following:

Should some sort of treatment be enforced on the drug addict (coerced treatments) or should the addict be totally free to decide wheter he wants to have a treatment or not? We are talking about psychotherapeutic treatments with the aim to cope with life and the aim to eventually come out of drug addiction.

Why is the question problematic?

I am referring to the two concepts of liberty (see Berlin´s paper with regards to it): positive freedom and negative freedom. To refresh memories:
Negative freedom asserts that freedom is the absence of restrictions. In this sense a coerced treatment would be a massive invasion of personal freedom and thus maybe ethically not justifiable. "Positive liberty is the possibility of acting — or the fact of acting — in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes" (quoting the Plato Standord entry on "Positive and Begative Liberty"). (I hope you don´t bother the sloppy citation style for this purpose here). To make a classical example: even if the child doesn´t want to go to school, he is forced to do so, and in the future he will be happy for it, because he gained freedom. Without education you would be the slave of others opinions and rhetorical capacities. In this sense, enforcing a treatment, even though the addict may dislike it at the start, is much more justifiable, because you are assuring his freedom in the future, where he or she is not anymore a slave of the "drugs will".

So what do you think? Is some sort of coerced treatment better or worse than full liberal choice?

(Note: With coerced treatment I don´t mean something radical in the sense of either that or something bad happens to you. I think you can find nice ways to "nicely enforce", assuring that the addict is not stigmatized, that he is not seen as a problem, etc.. Maybe some of you heard of "drug-accepting approach" in social work. I would implement that with a mandatory group therapy (or single therapy)).
The problem with the idea is not about the freedom of the addict to make their own decisions it is that the treatment has a low chance of working, thus is not worth the relative loss of freedom, even in a Positive Freedom paradigm. Now if there was a highly successful treatment with a low chance of recidivism, that would be a different case entirely.

-- Updated May 7th, 2016, 1:56 pm to add the following --
Wilson wrote:
Sanchez wrote:There are two motives for drug legalization; 1) the liberal notion that taking drugs is an innocent act (a view I don't completely reject). 2) the "harm reduction" philosophy which is fatalistic and based on the assumption that addicts are hopeless. The latter is largely a result of ineffective "treatment."

I don't support the War on Drugs and I do agree that prohibition has a lot of problems, the market it opens for organized crime being the biggest one. But the idea that the problems associated with substance abuse are the results of prohibition is insane.
There's also the economic and practical motive - that the drug war is expensive and ineffective and on balance causes more harm than good. I think you've made a very effective argument against the idea that prohibition is the cause of substance abuse with the examples of liquor and cigarettes, and I certainly agree.
A question for those who propose legalization of "drugs": would all drugs be legal? There would no longer be a need for prescriptions, right? You could get any product at any time. Chemotherapy, Birth control, abortion meds... everything, right?
"As usual... it depends."
Sanchez
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Re: Freedom and treatments for drug addicts

Post by Sanchez »

LuckyR wrote: A question for those who propose legalization of "drugs": would all drugs be legal? There would no longer be a need for prescriptions, right? You could get any product at any time. Chemotherapy, Birth control, abortion meds... everything, right?
A good question. If you follow the legalization logic, you'd have to end up with something along those lines. If not, you can be accused of being the same type of square that opposes legalization. On a similar note, I would ask whether there would still be a legal age limit as to who gets the dope. The funny thing is that the same logic used to support legalization can be used to support the abolishing of age limits. You can argue that underage users get into more trouble because it is forbidden from them and also point out that age limits rarely prevent people from using. You can also argue that any efforts to prevent underage drug use are too expensive.
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March 2022

2X2 on the Ark

2X2 on the Ark
by Mary J Giuffra, PhD
April 2022

The Maestro Monologue

The Maestro Monologue
by Rob White
May 2022

What Makes America Great

What Makes America Great
by Bob Dowell
June 2022

The Truth Is Beyond Belief!

The Truth Is Beyond Belief!
by Jerry Durr
July 2022

Living in Color

Living in Color
by Mike Murphy
August 2022 (tentative)

The Not So Great American Novel

The Not So Great American Novel
by James E Doucette
September 2022

Mary Jane Whiteley Coggeshall, Hicksite Quaker, Iowa/National Suffragette And Her Speeches

Mary Jane Whiteley Coggeshall, Hicksite Quaker, Iowa/National Suffragette And Her Speeches
by John N. (Jake) Ferris
October 2022

In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All

In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All
by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
November 2022

The Smartest Person in the Room: The Root Cause and New Solution for Cybersecurity

The Smartest Person in the Room
by Christian Espinosa
December 2022

2021 Philosophy Books of the Month

The Biblical Clock: The Untold Secrets Linking the Universe and Humanity with God's Plan

The Biblical Clock
by Daniel Friedmann
March 2021

Wilderness Cry: A Scientific and Philosophical Approach to Understanding God and the Universe

Wilderness Cry
by Dr. Hilary L Hunt M.D.
April 2021

Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute: Tools To Spark Your Dream And Ignite Your Follow-Through

Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute
by Jeff Meyer
May 2021

Surviving the Business of Healthcare: Knowledge is Power

Surviving the Business of Healthcare
by Barbara Galutia Regis M.S. PA-C
June 2021

Winning the War on Cancer: The Epic Journey Towards a Natural Cure

Winning the War on Cancer
by Sylvie Beljanski
July 2021

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream
by Dr Frank L Douglas
August 2021

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts
by Mark L. Wdowiak
September 2021

The Preppers Medical Handbook

The Preppers Medical Handbook
by Dr. William W Forgey M.D.
October 2021

Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress: A Practical Guide

Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress
by Dr. Gustavo Kinrys, MD
November 2021

Dream For Peace: An Ambassador Memoir

Dream For Peace
by Dr. Ghoulem Berrah
December 2021