ADDICTION ADDICTS

By KEVIN WM. WILDES

WASHINGTON Many of my friends have recently become addicts. They have
not taken up some new drug or habit. They're doing the same thing they have
been doing for years. They smoke.

They became addicts because of a push, socially and legally, to
"medicalize" smoking that is, make their habit a medical problem.

This kind of thing has happened before. People who drink too much on a
regular basis, for example, have long since ceased to be regarded as moral
failures or sinners. Now they are viewed as diseased.

Children who can't concentrate on their homework were once thought of as
bad students; now they might get a diagnosis of attention deficient disorder.

For years, smoking was viewed as a harmful choice for which one took
personal responsibility. But now many states are trying to force tobacco
companies to pay smokingrelated health costs, and implicit in their
argument is the belief that smoking is a medical condition.

We normally do not blame sick people for their illnesses. We have
understood them as victims of chance or some evil power. But calling a
smoker a victim of an addiction shifts responsibility away from the
individual. It blames tobacco companies for the smokers' habits while
helping others to profit from that addiction.

Doctors, for instance, profit when behavior is turned into a medical
condition. Their responsibilities expand, along with their status and power.

Companies that develop therapies certainly profit. For example, the
manufacturers of Ritalin have benefited from the increase in the number of
cases of attention deficit disorder.

Turning smokers into addicts has given government a new justification for
expanding its authority. Federal, state and local governments now have a
reason to regulate behavior, by limiting where people can smoke, and to
penalize tobacco companies, by censoring their advertisements.

The motives for medicalizing smoking may not be as pure as they are
portrayed. Indeed, there are even cases where they may have little to do
with improving the public health.