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Topic: How can public policy makers avoid replacing an old set of unworkable myths with a new set of unworkable myths?
Topic Posted by: R. Bodholdt (http://www.galapagos@webtv.net )Date Posted: Wed Apr 1 0:47:48 1998
Topic Description: Addiction is a problem with many voices. Personally, I am an advocate of research, experience and dialogue. My concern is that public policy makers (and society) are at a stage of readiness to simply endorse another set of uninspected ideas.
Posted by: JGE
Date posted: Sat Apr 4 1:37:05 1998
Subject: Mythologies
Message:
I think to solve any problem we need to go through at least three basic steps: 1) DEFINE the problem 2) Explore OPTIONS 3) TRY some of those options to see if they work. In the case of the "war" on "drugs", because of fear, we have skipped right over the first two and rushed into the third step. We've rushed right into the use of force as our primary approach. We need to back up and first define the problem. When we do that, we'll see that this is primarily a health issue, and we'll see that alcohol has by far the most destruction associated with it of any drug, and we'll see that there's a difference between people hurting themselves and hurting others, and so on. This will then lead to different options being explored which will lead to different mythologies and then different attempted areas for improvement. -Jim
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