“We have introduced a new policy that will mean heroin and crack addicts get treatment in return for benefits.\u00a0\u00a0 We will actually help them rather than simply handing them money which ends up in pockets of drug dealers.\u00a0 But we can’t abandon anyone to long periods on benefits without help to overcome problems.\u00a0 So that’s why we are going to look at the\u00a0arrangements for alcoholics on benefits, just as we did for problem drug users, so that people get the help they need to get sober, to get their life back and get back to work.”<\/p>\n
Mr Purnell has previously said that the plans to cut drug addicts’ benefits would give them the chance to “turn their lives around”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Mr Purnell would seem to have a rather strange account of what is meant by the word “help” in the context of helping people to seek treatment: as far as I can see,\u00a0the word he should have used is “force”.\u00a0 Now, I suppose this might be fair enough: there’s perhaps an argument to be made that coercion might be permissible\u00a0in the case of treatment for addiction.\u00a0 (Whether the argument\u00a0is convincing is another matter.)\u00a0 But the euphemising doesn’t, er, help.\u00a0 To help someone to\u00a0do something is to assist or offer assistance: it is not to impose anything.\u00a0 And, granted the widespread feeling among people who know about these things that alcoholism – addiction generally – is a health problem, then holding back benefits seems to be… well, it’s an odd way to go about things, isn’t it?<\/p>\n
One might also note that, if people are<\/em> “abandoned to long periods on benefits”, then removing the benefits solves the problem only in the most formalistic sense.\u00a0 People abandoned on benefits become simply abandoned.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I go for the salad-spinner option.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some health policies are very well thought-through and their merits are obvious.\u00a0 Others take a bit of time and thought for their merits to become clear.\u00a0 Some are well-meaning but wrong.\u00a0 And some are mad as a bag of wasps in a salad-spinner. Into which category should we put James Purnell’s suggestion that alcoholics should […]<\/p>\n
Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[511,475],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Benefits of not being an Alcoholic - Journal of Medical Ethics blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2009\/04\/17\/the-benefits-of-not-being-an-alcoholic\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Benefits of not being an Alcoholic - Journal of Medical Ethics blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Some health policies are very well thought-through and their merits are obvious.\u00a0 Others take a bit of time and thought for their merits to become clear.\u00a0 Some are well-meaning but wrong.\u00a0 And some are mad as a bag of wasps in a salad-spinner. 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