![]() ![]() The adverse consequences to which that rhetoric refers are not limited to the individual who is dependent, but create negative effects for their immediate families and wider society. The twentieth century gave the word ‘addiction’ a new meaning, that of an uncontrollable disease…” That ‘disease’ (which the World Health Organisation refer to as ‘ dependence‘) is characterised by, “…the state of needing or depending on something or someone for support or to function or survive….” and presents as, “…a cluster of cognitive, behavioural and physiologic symptoms that indicate a person has impaired control of psychoactive substance use and continues use of the substance despite adverse consequences…” ’ In fact, caffeine drew nearly as much concern as the opiates during that period. Thus, until the end of the 19th century, ‘most physicians regarded addiction as a morbid appetite, a habit, or a vice. The observation that opium caused less health damage than alcohol even led physicians in the USA to prescribe opium and morphine for alcoholics as a substitute for alcohol. This may be related to the fact that opium and its derivatives, the opiates (e.g., heroin, morphine, and codeine), were openly and legally used in the USA until the beginning of the twentieth century and were considered by many less offensive than cigarette smoking. Thus, when the German physician Levinstein wrote the first detailed description of opium addiction in 1877, he still saw addiction as a human passion, such as smoking, gambling, greediness for profit, sexual excesses, etc. ![]() Only towards the end of the nineteenth century did ‘addiction’ begin to be used to describe a preoccupation with drugs, but it still did not have the connotations that the term would receive later. Originally the word ‘ addiction’ (from the Latin source, addicere) was used for a strong inclination towards any kind of conduct, good or bad. In their 2000 book, “ A Critique of Nicotine Addiction“, Reuven Dar and Hanan Frenk note that, “… many psychoactive drugs have been used by humans for hundreds and even thousands of years, the term drug addiction was a creation of the twentieth century. The ‘corporations’ in our tale refer to the tobacco and alcohol companies, while the ‘criminal organisations’ refer to the estimated supply participants in the global market for illicit drugs. The above paragraph is not science fiction, but a reflection on part of the global market for addiction. Together, these organisations (conservatively) generated over USD 2 trillion in revenues and were (again, conservatively) linked to the deaths of almost 9 million people every single year (of which 8.5 million deaths were caused by the legally sanctioned products of corporations). ![]() In hypothetical-land, global corporations and criminal organisations used (often subversive) techniques to hook individuals onto dangerous substances which would alter their minds and bodies, often killing them. We discuss the role of drugs in society, and examine the social, economic and political implications of drugs use for the future of our world. In this exclusive interview, we speak to Professor Griffith Edwards, CBE (A world expert in alcohol and drug addiction) who founded the National Addiction Centre, served as Editor in Chief of the Addiction journal and is Professor Emeritus of Addiction Behaviour at Kings College London.
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