What Is the Government Doing About Addiction?

Addiction is a health problem, which in many societies means that it’s a government problem. And with that in mind, the immediate next question is going to be ‘what is the government doing about addiction?’

And there are several answers to this. To get an idea about the various perspectives that it’s being pursued from, consider things like official legislation, drug scheduling, offering scientific information on the topic, looking at issue on the community versus federal level, and researching various outreach programs that are under government supervision or use government funding.

Official Legislation

The government occasionally tries to create relevant addiction recovery legislation, but due to the difficulty of adding science into the discussion, and the wrangling about moral issues from different political stances, very little is often accomplished. This is too bad, because better legal recourse for addicts would lead to incredibly positive results. Hopefully in the future, differences in these fields will be leveled out so that practicality becomes the law, rather than personal bias.


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Drug Scheduling

The government, once again, is falling behind the 8-ball when it comes to drug scheduling as well. When you look up the basics of how drugs are scheduled, and which drugs fit in which category, you’ll quickly realize that there’s not a whole lot of sensibility included. The methods are outdated, the information is stilted for political reasons, and the punishments are severely unbalanced to favor or disfavor different groups of people. It isn’t like these are secrets, either, which would hopefully lead humanity at some point to rethink the way it makes and keeps laws in the face of logic and pragmatism.

Offering Information

The government typically offers a poor choice of information about drugs and addiction as well. Science is often put in the backseat to personal preference, nepotism, and ideology, rather than given any sort of data driven path to be analyzed from. This is one of the things about addiction that makes it such a difficult path to get out of – even sources that you’re supposed to trust have very poorly updated information about extremely important topics.

Community Versus Federal Level Regulations

Drug laws are different between federal statutes and state rules. This makes for some interesting conflict when the federal government tries to catch people doing things wrong that the states don’t have any sort of regulations against.

Outreach Programs

Fortunately, there are some drug and addiction outreach programs that, even if they aren’t run by the government, are at least financially supported by them. These are some of the most effective ways of information adults and children about the risks and consequences of different kinds of drug use, both from legal standpoints and health considerations.

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