Drug Addiction

Liberal MPP Bob Callahan was born and raised in New York City's South Bronx. He has spent almost three decades as a criminal lawyer. He has seen, as a result, more than his share of social chaos.

Callahan believes much of it is the product of substance abuse. He says probably 75 per cent of people he saw jailed were alcoholics or drug addicts. He wants to do something about it.

He does not believe such people are weak, stupid or immoral. He believes they are sick. He believes they need treatment. And if the costs are daunting, he says society and government should ponder the choice.

I read with interest Stephen Hume's May 9 column, "How Far Should We Go to Protect Society from Itself?" I agree with the tenor of the column but would like to comment on two points.

The first concerns the protection of those Mr. Hume called "the stupid, the ignorant, the careless and the reckless."

The arrangement between the sex-trade worker and the trick is voluntary, particularly for the latter. However, what is frequently forgotten is that tricks often have other sexual consorts, such as mates, and other close people, such as children, who may be adversely affected.

Cigarette smoking can be classified as drug addiction, says a team of scientific experts in a report submitted to the federal government.

"Cigarette smoking can, and frequently does, meet the criteria for the definition of drug addiction. When it does so, it should be described as nicotine addiction. . . ," says the report written by the Royal Society of Canada for the federal Health Department.

Cigarette smoking is a drug addiction similar to cocaine or heroin use, U.S. Surgeon-General Everett Koop said yesterday.

Koop, in his annual report to Congress on smoking, also recommended toughening laws restricting the sale of tobacco products to minors, including requiring establishments where tobacco is sold to be licenced.

"Our nation has mobilized enormous resources to wage a war on drugs - illicit drugs," Koop said.

"We should also give priority to the one addiction - tobacco addiction - that is killing more than 300,000 Americans each year."

How cocaine turns users into addicts; It tricks brain into thinking it's doing coke for survival;

It is almost as if people were programmed to become cocaine addicts. Deep inside the brain, a small bundle of nerves called the pleasure centre drives human behavior.

Although it accounts for perhaps only four millionths of all the brain cells, it is intertwined with every other brain system.