Is the current trend of opinion that drug addiction is a responsibility of Government rather than a wise or foolish individual choice?
If drug addiction is truly a disease, why are we not treating it as an infectious disease same as we did with HIV/AIDS? Frankly, if you are not aware HIV/AIDS is still prevalent and being transmitted by choice of those who engage in unprotected risky sex practices.
Whoa! Am I now a bigot for comparing a homosexual activity to drug addiction as a disease because I am an uncompassionate bigot? Or am I comparing two free will choices to who or what is really to blame for a person to be inflicted or addicted to a social disease?
Who or what to blame, is the subject of this post. Is it individuals or Government policies, or both?
King Solomon
He who works in a half-hearted way is a brother to a wrecker. (Proverb, 18:9)
He does not act as if he expected to be successful and his half-hearted unconvincing efforts are ruinous. He is a brother to a wrecker in a sense that although he does not ruin himself by wild insensate behavior which is devoid of self-interest and self-destructive, yet the end of his lethargy coincides with that of recklessness. (Proverbs Mc Kane)
There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end, it leads to death. (Proverb 14:12)
Foolish choices and habits may lead to two kinds of to death, body, and soul.
“Generally, we don’t think we are starting a habit. But giving in once to something that can harm us can make it easier to repeat and repeat and (you get the idea). This is especially true of addictive substances like tobacco and drugs. Other habits can have varying levels of powerful psychological addiction, like gambling, pornography, eating disorders and video game addiction.” (Excerpt Source HERE
Definition of Disease
a disorder of structure or function in a human, animal, or plant, especially one that produces specific signs or symptoms or that affects a specific location and is not simply a direct result of physical injury.
“bacterial meningitis is a rare disease”
synonyms: illness, sickness, ill health; More
- a particular quality, habit, or disposition regarded as adversely affecting a person or group of people.
“departmental administration has often led to the dread disease of departmentalitis”
What’s My Point?
When Government passes Laws to legalize people to buy substances such as alcohol or drugs, even though it is scientifically proven that it can lead to an addiction, they are making a disposition that it is the will of the people to make the substances legal.
When people make individual lifestyle choices of good or bad habits, it is their freedom of personal choice in the USA.
The problem arises when Government makes substances legal and available to the public, and by doing so helps spread the adverse effect on a person or group of people. By Government making it legal to obtain substances that that results in nonusers having to pay taxes to cure the dread disease of choice or habit caused by human choices rather than a virus or bacterial diseases.
The role in Government by making a substance legal, is in effect acting in a halfhearted manner is helping spread a social disease and in effect becoming wrecker to our nation.
For example, in a previous post on a comparison to how Cuba controlled the HIV/AIDS epidemic resulted in controlling the disease versus the USA half-hearted method which did not. The result is HIV/AIDs is still costing USA taxpayers billions of dollars yearly and is still spreading higher than original yearly cost estimates.*
The government has declared an opium epidemic in the USA and is again working in a halfhearted manner to control the continued spread of opium disease.
In My Opinion
It is time to end use of taxpayer’s money in a halfhearted way. The only way to cure a disease is to stop it from spreading by either quarantining the diseased like Cuba. The Government needs to broadcast the truth in warnings to people who choose to engage in habits that lead to their death.
In other words, quit acting in a half-hearted manner and quit allowing the disease to spread. If people want Government to legalize drugs, then make the drug users understand they will have to pay their own medical expenses rather than taxpayers
If compassionate people want to donate to a charitable organization to be compassionate to aid social disease of choice, they can choose to be compassionate.
Make people buy their own insurance to pay for the medical expenses to cure self-inflicted diseases incurred by their choice rather than taxpayers.
Taxpayers should not be paying for foolish choices made by the free will of people who make decisions to inflict a disease on themselves.
You Decide
For example, in the next referendum to legalize marijuana, warn voters that if they decide to engage in using legalizes recreational marijuana and become addicted, they will be responsible to pay for their own medical expenses. Would you engage in recreation use of marijuana?
If Government made the same statements on packages of cigarettes, would you smoke?
If Government made the same statements in public broadcasts about HIV/AIDS or other STD, sexual transmitted diseases, would you make use of sexually transmitted protective measure?
King Solomon’s Proverbs use on this subject, Wise or Foolish?
Do you believe this contemporary proverb is wise or foolish, “If you want to play, then you must pay?”
Regards and good will blogging.
Previous Post Links
https://rudymartinka.com/2016/11/29/king-solomon-fidel-castro-a-wise-savior/
https://rudymartinka.com/2017/12/13/king-solomon-using-marijuana-to-teach-a-childs-brain-matter-or/
https://rudymartinka.com/2018/01/02/king-solomon-on-wine-and-marijuana/
https://www.cdc.gov/pwud/addiction.html
“They weren’t acts of God,” Ghiglieri said. “They were acts of human erroneous thinking, negligent behavior or arrogance.” (Source HERE)
*https://equityhealthj.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s12939-017-0683-y
Rudy u Martinka 
The problem with “paying your own way for your own medical abuses” will spill over well past simply abusing yourself with drugs. I’m a Type II.. no question got there simply because I abused myself with the foods I ate and likely not choosing to exercise it off. Under your solution do I now pay my own way on all the medical afflictions that might arise because of my abuse?
I had to have a melanoma removed on my right back shoulder that was obviously cancer. It went fine and it looks so far it didn’t spread. But when I asked the cause of that thing the doc indicated that it was likely the result of a bad sunburn or two when I was a kid. So do I pay for my own skin cancer because I stayed out too long in the sun as a kid?
I still go back to the idea that we need a national mental health policy. A lot of drug use can be linked to that… which then suggests drug abuse could be caused by mental health issues.. such as a life trauma, physical abuse.. rape,, any number of unavoidable causes, not causes of simply a bad life choice.
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@Doug
Why does anyone have a financial obligation to take care of someone else’s health problem? If someone in Timbuktu, gets cancer, do you believe you should pay for their treatment?
When I saw how our government and the general population treated HIV/AIDS, I was flabbergasted. It’s a volunteer disease mostly spread by homosexuals. There are exceptions, like the people who get infected because they get were given contaminated blood or their mothers had HIV/AIDS. However, the vast majority get the disease because their behavior is reckless.
Nevertheless, when HIV/AIDS started spreading, our government would not quarantine the fools, and many even denied the obvious, that homosexuals were doing the most to spread the disease. Instead, we spent billions in research so homosexuals could maintain their “lifestyle”.
Even so, you want Socialized medicine. In spite of the fact you think most people are apathetic, you want the general public in charge of your health care choices? That makes no sense.
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Not sure I fully understand if the government pays for it all to prevent/detect potential problems or fix something that needs fixing… how have I lost my choice? Now…. if what I want is elective.. then I should have a choice on where to go and pay for it myself.
Anyway, the concept of “why should I be forced to pay for someone else’s cancer” seems nulled when compared to the concept that one day YOU might require such care for some unexpected malady or life accident.
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@Doug
That is the problem, understanding. In a Socialist system we slowly lose our ability to make choices.
Look at what the advocates for Socialism do. At each step of the way, their solutions only make things worse. Socialism does not work. So what is their next solution. It is much the same as the their last solution. They demand more control.
In a full-blown Socialist state you won’t own much of anything, and all the information you have will come from the state. You will just do as you are told or else.
You will say, of course, I am being hysterical? The counter for that is our history. The counter for that is that you cannot actually explain how what you want would work. The counter for that is to look around the world. Authoritarian governments are more normal than not.
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Oh I dunno.. seems to work in Canada, Scandinavia, etc. I am no socialist politically.. I just think it’s inevitable government, somewhere down the line (years/decades), is gonna have to pay for it… and if that’s true then we should start building into whatever healthcare system we choose now that will mediate the inevitable later.
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@Doug
Would like the list of failures? My guess is that you know them already.
We already can see this happening in our country. Look at the Constitution. See the kinds of programs the Constitution authorized the Congress to fund. Then look at the Federal Budget. If you can’t see the disconnect, you are blind.
The Constitution is supposed to protect our rights, especially from our own government, and we are not holding our elected officials accountable to it. Why? Our elected leaders are using “other people’s money” to bribe us.
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You may be right Doug, The only slight adjustment we need to make to emulate their systems is to pay the same tax rates as they do. I seem to remember the Scandanavian pay about 70 percent of their wages in income taxes. I may be wrong.
Regards and good will blogging.
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Would you be a Type 2 if you had to pay your own med bills?
I only listed the 3 med proven bad self kill choices.
I am not a med guy, but if Type 2 is another self-kill choice, by all means lets add it to a list of items people should pay for their own insurance.
Regards and good will blogging.
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If you jaywalk and get hit by a car when the state says you should have crossed at the crosswalk… should that be up to you as well? Just trying to monitor and qualify all the possible angles would be a bureaucracy.
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Doesn’t California have to fines for jaywalkers now?
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Yep. Apparently we lost the freedom to look both way for ourselves because people with less-than-complete faculties keep walking into traffic. What a state.
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Given the recent outcry of obesity in America and the cost it’s adding to healthcare I’m guessing you want the government to outlaw sugar or have them sign off on the use of it. O.o
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Not really. It is very hard for obese to loss weight. My purpose of mentioning obese is only to make we are that it is choice.
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