Attempting To Better Understand Addiction

We’re not very good, collectively, at dealing with addicts and realizing the “why” behind it. Let’s try and be better.

First: Admit we’re not great at understanding addiction.

That pull quote above is from this article on the “crack pipe saga” of last week, whereby according to Washington Free Beacon, Biden’s administration was going to “hand out free crack pipes.” That became a conservative flashpoint — paging Tucker Carlson and his producers! — and, much like some similar efforts that Bill Clinton tried to do and ultimately lost on, some of this stuff will fall by the wayside. You might think: “Good. I don’t want people getting free crack pipes based on my property values and salary.” You’d be half-right. The approach is actually called “harm reduction,” or “contingency management,” and it has a pretty good track record. It’s so good, in fact, that some hardcore conservatives have kicked tires on it or used it outright. Here’s a Mike Pence example:

And here’s one from Tom Cotton or Arkansas: