No, this is not mere popular interpretation, I believe. Articles are nice things, but I have few friends with reach experience in the field and they would probably disagree with what is written in the article.

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Specifically, do you know of people who got genuinely addicted, including withdrawal symptoms ("kriz"), from just a few doses of opiates?

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I know people who had a obstinence syndrome after having used heroine for three consecutive days. Though it was still not the kind of "kriz" that one feels like dieing without a doze, as far as I can judge. Once I used heroine with a friend of mine; I didn't continue, but he did continue for the next two days and I could see how he felt.

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Not letting you decide reasonably. but is negative disinformation about drugs any worse then positive disinformation about ciggarettes?
Either way, I try to check what I get in my mouth (said the woman who gave up meat and milk and never drank or smoked).

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*resists making jokes about putting things in mouths*

Where is there positive disinformation about cigarettes? Part of my job is to read everything written anywhere in Israel about cigarettes every day. It's quite a lot. None of it is positive.

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"Oh, how refreshing is [cigarette brand name" sort of ad. Including those stating it is healthy.
Today this sort of disinformation is not as easily sold to the public, but the articles about passive smoking - some saying it's worse than smoking, some saying it has no effect at all - must be lying. At least a part of them.

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ads are not a valid example.

the articles: are just an example for negative disinformation.

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How are they not? Ads are all about disinformation.

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morin contrasted ads to negative disinformation by the authorities. it's not valid just because of what you said - ads are all about disinformation, they are defined by it and to most of the people (hopefully) they don't hold the same level of credibility as the "authorities".

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The anti-drug authorities here in the US run all sorts of ads; the distinction is blurry to me.

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I made a distinction between the commercial ads morin referred to, to the ads of the anti-drugs authorities. the latter are just their way of communicating their message to the public - which in this case is mostly negative disinformation rather than positive.

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No, it isn't worse.

A physician I know once told me that the toughest, most persistent physical addiction, among all narcotics, is nicotine -- nicotine, not heroin, not alcohol, not crack cocaine, etc.

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Maybe, but you'll find it much more difficult to OD on nicotine. Plus, I believe the nicotine itself isn't harmful to you - just the rest of the gunk they put in tobacco products.

(Dubi, who never smoked, and probably never will either)

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Thanks for the link. Does make you think, doesn't it?

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The article displays a chilling lack of empathy towards addicts; I suspect that his point is valid, in so far as addiction is probably more psychological than physical.
This doesn't make it less of a problem, though.
Demonizing the drug mostly helps society continue to ignore the causes for addicted behaviour. Rather than confronting the combination of psychological problems and social circumstances that reinforce addiction, just blame it on chemical dependency.
Hard addiction and related personal and social problems can be associated with Alcohol or other "legal" drugs just as easily as with Heroin.

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This article is really interesting, but it is from the Wall Street Journal--a classically conservative paper.

Ultimately, does it really matter if the difficulty of withdrawal is an old social construct? If people still feel it, doesn't it count? Also, I am skeptical of this because it seems to claim that all addicts experience addiction and withdrawal similarly, and I doubt that is true.

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I wouldn't call the WSJ classically conservative; their ideological stance has been in flux for at least the last quarter century, shifting to maintain support for the Republicans.

In an event

If people still feel it, doesn't it count?

Yes, but it counts very differently. The sort of addiction truly associated with opiates is not so much different from that which can be associated with virtually any other activity. Most of us wouldn't find excuse in philatelic withdrawl. (Nor would there be much of a case for outlawing stamps collecting because someone had shot-up a liquor store to support that habit.)

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Theodore Dalrymple generally knows what he's talking about, and I find his claims quite plausible here. A point I think he misses (one which Andrew Weil made long ago in The Natural Mind) is the suggestive power of the popular image of drug withdrawal. Assuming he's right and giving up heroin is not the ordeal it's made out to be, I still don't think his addicts are manipulative frauds: the withdrawal-is-hell-on-earth story is the only one out there, from De Quincey to Trainspotting, and this makes it very likely that anyone trying to give up heroin will recreate that scenario for themselves and never know they are doing so.

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how can disinformation not be on purpose?

like, "oops, we didn't check the information before we published it"?

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I agree with the partial legal option, eventhough I wouldn't use them. If others do, well it's their health not mine. The harder ones should still be illegal, since they are still addictive in some form and they have much more harder effects (including overdosing, which wouldn't happen with the back-garden variety...).

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