Social Problems as Alcoholism and Drug Abuse

¶ … social problems as alcoholism and drug abuse as diseases rather than behavior disorders? What are the implications of treating other social problems as diseases? What are the implications for the medical care system of the proliferation of these new diseases?

It is not as important to distinguish between behavior disorder and disease as it is to find the root causes of these classifications. Behavior disorders suggest that the person's actions are somewhat preventable while diseases are portrayed as unpreventable. Much grey area and confusion arise in these discussions because causes and effect relationships are not explicit. Obesity can be considered both a disease or a behavior problem, like other kinds of substance abuse. But what are the factors that lead to any specific problem? Unfortunately until individuals realize that they are responsible for their own conduct and rampant victimization ceases to be celebrated, these problems of identifying causes of problems will still exist.

Social problems being treated as diseases suggests that these problems are inescapable. This pessimistic attitude implies that the medical care system will continue to grow and become a dominant factor in fixing problems in society, when before court systems and other helping organizations took responsibility for helping others with their problems.

2. What are the costs to society of cocaine use? Alcohol use? Tobacco use? Which of these presents the biggest problem? Explain.

The costs to society in material terms are great when applying the losses of money and efficiently due to the abuse of drugs. Tobacco, alcohol, cocaine, food, exercise, anything that can be consumed is liable to being abused. Distinguishing between different types of abuse does little to remedy the main problem. Abuse problems arise when little or no self-confidence is held by the abuser. A reliance on the heavy usage of a foreign substance gives that person power to face the world. This is not an issue unless dealing with substances that possess strong healing properties such as cocaine and alcohol. Addiction itself is the problem, and if cocaine disappeared over night something else would replace it. Addressing the root causes of addiction and ignoring the morality behind each individual drug or substance allows for society to deal with this problem in a more civilized manner.

3. What are some of the sources of barriers to entry into the hospital industry? What has the literature concluded about the severity of these barriers?

The hospital industry has been driven by profits in recent years to the point where healing is now a secondary task. It must be recognized that simple and cheap healing methods threaten the large money-making schemes of large medical and pharmacological corporations. Any barriers that are related to entry into the hospital industry are centered around how much profit this entry may allow. Literature and medical journals must admit their own bias in these cases as well due to their reliance and the amount of business they produce and responsibility to their workers and stock holders. Overall, this is an unfortunate situation.

4. Why may vertical integration lead to lower production costs? Why may those systems lead to higher costs?

Vertical integration is a technique that works well when large companies have the resources to buy out their competition . Rarely do these moves bode well for the market as this power grabbing move allows for a stronger consolidation for the corporation performing the consolidation. Lower production costs arise for the company due to absence of exchange with other smaller companies. As a result the supply of whatever product these smaller companies were competing to sell has gone down, ultimately resulting in higher costs for the customer.