Epidemiology Abuse: Epidemiologic and Psychosocial Perspectives on Heroin Maintenance

Abstract

Epidemiologic approaches treat human drug abuse as if it were an infectious disease and deal with it within the framework of host, agent and environment. Epidemiologists, approaching drug abuse from a public health standpoint think in terms of supply reduction. Psychosocial approaches focus on the demand aspect of drug abuse. Interest centers on psychological/sociological explanations of drug-taking behavior, such as psychopathology and alienation and on unintended consequences of supply-reduction strategies. The 2 models apparently complement each other and need to be integrated. A policy os strict supply reduction for nonaddicts coupled with heroin maintenance for addicts was suggested. Such a policy combines epidemiologic emphasis on supply reduction with psychosocial stress on the intractible nature of addition and futility of prohibition-like approaches.