“One thing is for certain. When society gives power of diagnosis and treatment to individuals
within a group schooled in just one uncompromising model of addiction with the majority attributing their very own sobriety to that model, they will exercise that power to diagnose and treat anyone and everyone according to that model. The birth of Addiction Medicine as an ABMS accepted discipline is sure to be a success for the drug and alcohol testing and 12-step treatment industry, but its spawn is sure to be an inauspicious mark on the Profession and Guild of Medicine and a bane of society for years to come.” ―Michael Lawrence Langan.(1)

References

1. DISRUPTED PHYSICIAN 101.2: “ADDICTION MEDICINE” IS A SELF-DESIGNATED PRACTICE SPECIALTY UNRECOGNIZED BY THE AMERICAN BOARD OF MEDICAL SPECIALTIES–(AN AMA CENSUS TERM INDICATING NEITHER TRAINING NOR COMPETENCE).
URL: http://disruptedphysician.com/2014/11/21/disrupted-physician-101-3-addic… (date accessed: December 17, 2014).

Competing interests: No competing interests

Additional comments

I. The original title of this response:

– Drug policy: we probably need an “irrational authority”.

Please read as:

– Drug policy: we definitely need an “irrational authority”.

II. Societies like the American Society of Addiction Medicine and American Psychiatric Association have been self-proclaimed as “rational authorities”: a euphemism created probably by complex defense mechanisms of self-preservation in a society used to suppress dissenters and reward the wrongdoers.

“The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
― George Orwell, 1984

III. We probably need more “irrational authorities”.