Answer:
Three fundamental ideas about drugs, the people who use them, and ways to respond to them lie behind drug treatment and virtually all other instruments of drug policy in the United States. Embodied in criminal, medical, and libertarian approaches, these governing ideas have dominated the terms of public discussion and the gross allocation of public and private funds. As a result, there can be no detailed analysis of drug treatment without first understanding what these ideas are, where they come from, how they relate to each other, and how they have shaped the role and functions of treatment.
Explanation:
That the governing ideas are plural reflects two underlying realities concerning drugs and society. The first is that psychoactive drugs have a multiplicity of medical and social uses and consequences. Some of the uses are clearly beneficial, others are clearly pernicious, and still others are a complex mixture. Moreover, the pharmacopoeia is not static but growing. New drugs and innovative technologies to administer them are constantly arising from scientific research and pharmaceutical explorations.
The second reality is the persistence of social change, including the dialectic of political parties and philosophies and the continuous renegotiation of relationships between different institutions of government. Such change ensures the potential for different ideas to gain or lose potency. Therefore, if the social arrangements supporting policies associated with one fundamental idea turn unfavorable, the programs arising from those policies may wither only to revive again if conditions change.
