Addiction Specialist Nominated as Assistant Drug Czar
A scientist considered the top researcher on addiction and treatment was nominated as the nation’s assistant drug czar by President Obama, marking a positive shift in attitude toward addiction as a disease. As time has shown, it’s not enough to simply crack down on drug charges and put drug offenders behind bars; looking at the science of addiction and treating it as doctors would any other medical condition is imperative to making any real progress. The nomination of an addiction researcher and scientist is an important step in effectively reducing drug use and abuse.
If confirmed by the Senate, University of Pennsylvania psychologist A. Thomas McLellan would be deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which advises the president and coordinates anti-drug efforts. He would also be in charge of reducing demand for drugs, something that policy experts say has been overlooked for years.
McLellan worked at the Veterans Administration in the 1980s, where he developed the addiction severity index and the treatment services review, two tools that help determine the type and duration of treatment. He also worked with the state of Delaware to tie payment for treatment at state-funded centers to predetermined measures of success. In 1992, he co-founded the Treatment Research Institute to study how to transform promising research findings into clinical practice. He is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, and has published about 400 articles on addiction and treatment, one of which was a groundbreaking article comparing drug addiction to other chronic medical conditions.
In this 2000 article, McLellan noted that if a diabetes patient relapsed after treatment, most doctors would decide that more treatment was needed. Drug and alcohol addiction should be treated no differently. “In contrast, relapse to drug or alcohol use following discharge from addiction treatment has been considered evidence of treatment failure,” he said.
McLellan would serve under former Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske, who is known as a progressive police executive with a reputation for approaching law enforcement in innovative ways. This coupling suggests a strong break from the unsuccessful ideological and political drug programs under the Bush administration; programs that emphasize arresting and imprisoning drug suppliers rather than approaching addiction as a disease that needs to be treated.
