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Evidence-based Drug Crime Policy: Moving Beyond the Moral/Medical Dichotomy to a Multi-level Model of Addiction
Stephen Koppel JD*John Jay College of Criminal Justice, USA
- *Corresponding Author:
- Stephen Koppel JD
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, USA
Tel: +1 212-237-8000
E-mail: skoppel@jjay.cuny.edu
Received Date: January 11, 2016; Accepted Date: February 02, 2016; Published Date: February 09, 2016
Citation: Koppel JDS (2016) Evidence-based Drug Crime Policy: Looking beyond the Moral and Medical to a Multi-level Model of Addiction. J Civil Legal Sci 5:175. doi:10.4172/2169-0170.1000175
Copyright: © 2016 Koppel JDS. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The moral and medical models, the dominant paradigms of drug addiction, disagree on the question of responsibility. The moral model views drug addiction as an autonomous person’s choice. The medical model views it as the behavior of a ‘hijacked’ brain. Amid efforts to decarcerate American prisons, the relative merits of these two models are being weighed. Which raises the question of whether policy-makers must be resigned to choosing one side of the moral/ medical dichotomy. In this commentary, the moral and medical models will be critically evaluated, and an alternative 3rd way, a multi-level model, suggested.
