Addiction is not a disease, but rather it is a Choice. The compelling, multidimensional argument that conceptualizes drug addiction as a disease is misleading as well as erroneous. Best survey data existing reflects that many drug addicts can quit their addiction, factual information that is inconsistent with a disease model (Sharon, 2004). The basic, usual choice processes can result in addiction, people cannot choose to become addicts, however, normal dynamic choices can result in that condition. Through focusing on the responsibility of choice guided through choice-by-choice situations versus choice guided through the outcome of the structure of choices (framing), most people can avoid addiction. Therefore, addiction to drugs as well as alcohol is obviously not a disease. Thus, to call it a disease one must either oversee the major differences in the disease model or one must absolutely redefine what a disease entails.

According to Heyman (2009), the normal choice process is the root cause of drug abuse. While people cannot choose to drug addicts, they can make choices that result in addiction. Choice often involves the selection of the superior current option, and that under specific settings drugs are advantageous over other results. Drugs provide instant pleasure, their negative outcomes are delayed, drugs are not specifically subject to satiation as well as they are more valuable than other alternatives.

Drug addiction has both legal and medical implications. Medically, addiction has no physiological abnormality like in the cases of cancer as well as diabetes. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse and Addiction (2008), addiction is a chronic relapsing disease. It has the features of compulsive drug seeking as well as use, irrespective of the harmful consequences. Therefore, it is a brain disease since the drugs alter the brain’s structure as well as its functioning. Specifically, they expand or strengthen the circuits that are in use and shrink or weaken the rarely engaged circuits. These changes can be long term, and can result to the harmful behaviors visible in the people who abuse these drugs.

Legally, addiction can result in harmful behaviors such as murder. People should not be held accountable for harmful behaviors that result from an illness that they cannot control. However, when a person cannot stop being an addict and hurts or kills another person due to drunkenness, that person should be incarcerated as well as treated. Since the 19th century, legal prohibitions have been established. Drug abuse centered the wealthy abuse but also extended to the lower socioeconomic class, in the form of smoking. However, public concern elevated by drug abuse in the lower classes sought governmental responses against drug addiction. Currently, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s activities, as well as the criminal-justice system, assist in establishing the societally compulsory penalties drugs and substances addiction.

Currently, the costs of drug abuse are vast, involving the costs of implementation, lost productivity, incarceration as well as rehabilitation, which has increased since 1980. When a person’s addiction results from the lack of self-control, rather not from a disease, a taxpayer’s money can go to pay for their treatment. Treatment for drug abuse, as well as addiction, is provided in numerous different settings, employing a variety of behavioral as well as pharmacological approaches. Drug addiction is a complicated disorder that can involve every aspect of a person’s functioning, the family, work, school, as well as the community. Since drug abuse, as well as addiction, is a major public health challenge, treatment problem is largely funded by local government, the States as well as the Federal governments. Therefore, part of the taxpayer’s money is channeled towards treating drug addiction in the U.S.