Elephant : Disease Ads "Controversial"

Because I do believe that advertising works (see last blog entry), I'm ecstatic to see that the Partnership for a Drug Free America is going to roll out a campaign that it tested in Houston and Cincinnati last year. The ads carry the message that addiction is a disease. Unfortunately, they are not available to view on the Partnership's site. Nor is the rest of its portfolio. I wonder why that is? I don't know of any ad agency's site that doesn't display its best work.

A Houston Chronicle reporter, in the time-honored rote of "getting the other side of the story," speed dialed Dr. Stanton Peele, a psychologist who can always be counted on to counter the medical model of addiction. Peele believes that addiction is "a general pattern of behavior that nearly everyone experiences in varying degrees at one time or another."

He also talked to the Drug Policy Alliance's Ethan Nadelmann. Every time I try to like Nadelmann for advancing the idea that nonviolent drug offenders should not be rotting away in prison, he opens his mouth and says something that convinces me that his sole agenda is to make the world safe for drug users, not to help abusers.

This time Nadelmann makes it sound like the future of the Republic depends not only on the ability of people to enjoy the drug of their choice without fear of intervention of any sort but also without fear that someone might suggest that they have an illness should said drug, as is the case with nearly ten percent of our population (when you add in those addicted to prescription drugs), take over their lives.

Here's what Nadelmann told the Houston Chronicle:

"If we define drug addiction as a disease, does that mean that every cigarette smoker has a disease?" asked Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which seeks to end the war on drugs.

Addiction, Nadelmann said, typically occurs when someone's dependence on a substance causes problems for themselves and others. The line between recreational use and addiction is too open for interpretation in his book.

"Right now some people say one to two drinks a day if you're over 50 is great for the heart," he said. "On the other hand, others say if you need one to two drinks a day, you're addicted."

Still, he hopes that defining addiction as a disease will decriminalize drug use.

The fact is, I don't think that most people really believe that addiction is a disease, despite all of the scientific evidence to the contrary, so the story has every right to take a the angle that the ads will be "controversial." Good. As long as they get people thinking.

What I would like to see, though, is some fresh data from the other side to support their arguments. It seems to me that those who do not believe the evidence that addiction is a disease would take us back to a time when tub thumpers proclaimed that it was a moral failing.

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