These well-intentioned gambit fails to recognize the fact that the term 'addiction' is merely a political concept in a country that embraces the hypocritical moral standards of the Drug War. As Thomas Szasz pointed out in his 1974 ground-breaking book entitled 'Ceremonial Chemistry', President John F. Kennedy and his wife regularly used amphetamines during the early '60s, courtesy of Dr. Max Jacobson, in order to keep them fresh for their whirlwind schedules, yet they were never considered addicts. They were just taking a medication, don't you see? Meanwhile, had the no-name poor indulged in a similar habit, they would have been instantly labeled as addicts, thrown into jail, subjected to moralizing counseling sessions (in which folks like Gabriel Maté would have searched for their 'inner pain'), and been sent to 12-step programs to be reminded how helpless they were in the face of powerful chemical substances. Meanwhile, the poor people's 'pusher' would have been thrown in jail and labeled as 'vermin,' the same term that the NAZIs reserved for Jews and homosexuals. 
Do you know why I pulled you over? That's right, because the Drug War gives me carte blanche to be a noxious busybody. That, and the fact that you were about to drive right by the following essays related to the addiction topic broached above:
Not so fast. Effexor is much more insidious than I gave it credit for. I am teetering on the edge of a relapse. "The right to chew or smoke a plant that grows wild in nature, such as hemp (marijuana), is anterior to and more basic than the right to vote." --Thomas Szasz, Our Right to Drugs --p xvi13
Drug-designing chemists have no expertise in deciding what constitutes a cure for depression. As Schopenhauer wrote:
"The mere study of chemistry qualifies a man to become an apothecary, but not a philosopher."
Mayo Clinic is peddling junk. They are still promoting Venlafaxine, a drug that is harder to kick than heroin.
NIDA is just a propaganda arm of the U.S. government -- and will remain so until it recognizes the glaringly obvious benefits of drugs -- as well as the glaringly obvious downsides of prohibition. We need a National Institute on Drug Use, not a National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Harm Reduction is not enough. We need Benefit Production as well. The autistic should be able to use compassion-enhancing drugs; dementia patients should be able to use drugs that speed up and sharpen mental processes.
America legalizes alcohol and then outlaws all the drugs that could help prevent and cure alcoholism.
Every time I see a psychiatrist, I feel like I'm playing a game of make-believe. We're both pretending that hundreds of demonized medicines do not exist and could be of no use whatsoever.
Richard Evans Schultes seems to have originated the harebrained idea (since used by the US Supreme Court to suppress new religions) that you have no right to use drugs in a religious ritual if you did not grow up in a society that had such practices. What tyrannical idiocy!
After a long life, I have come to the conclusion that when all the establishment is united, it is always wrong. (Harold MacMillan)
Attention People's magazine editorial staff:
Matthew Perry was a big boy who made his own decisions. He didn't die because of ketamine or because of evil rotten drug dealers, he died because of America's enforced ignorance about psychoactive drugs.
The U.S. government created violence out of whole cloth in America's inner cities with drug prohibition -- and now it is using that violence as an excuse to kick the people that they themselves have knocked down.
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