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What Does Addiction Have to Do with Level of Consumption? A Response to R. Room
Stanton Peele
Level of consumption does not determine addictive symptomatology. Control policies are based on the negative images that societies hold of substances of which they disapprove, and in modern medicotechnological societies these images mainly concern a substance’s addictiveness. Alcohol has had a variety of such images in America historically. Heroin has been portrayed as the epitome of addiction during this century in the United States and Britain, while currently cigarettes and cocaine are objects of active marketing of addictive imagery. The epidemiological basis for these changing images often is unclear. Addictive images reflect changing use patterns and social attitudes as they also cause addiction.
