by Stephen Yolland

Created on: August 25, 2008   Last Updated: September 08, 2008

There are two types of people in this debate. Those who know what they are talking about and those who don't.

Those who don't may certainly hold their opinions genuinely. But the mere fact that they passionately believe what they say they believe does not mean their opinions should be given equal weight as those based on research and established facts.

And those point conclusively to alcohol and drug addiction being diseases.

Critically, such addictions are clearly shown to be passed down generation to generation. As Cotton pointed out in 1979, the lifetime risk for children of alcoholics is 20-30% as opposed to 5-10% for the general population, and the risk is decidedly greater for males than females.

But, of course, faced with this fact someone will immediately leap in and cry out "it's just the environment they're brought up in! If only they were strong-willed enough, they could resist the failings of their parents!"

So leaving aside entirely any discussion of whether social conditioning can create something identifiable as a disease (which would be an interesting debate in itself) let us also note that studies of twins and their drinking habits show conclusively that there IS a genetic pre-disposition to alcoholism.

Most twins (not all, but the vast majority) are brought up together. And if "environment" was the major factor in determining whether the children of alcoholics would in turn become alcohol abusers, then the rate of alcoholism in fraternal (non identical) twins who have been raised together should be very similar or identical to that of identical twins.

Now fraternal twins share about half their genes, but identical twins share all of them.

In many studies (the evidence is all over the internet), it is clear that genetically identical twins share a much higher chance of developing alcoholism inherited from their parents. Kaij (196) showed this to be about a 54.2% chance as opposed to about a 31% chance for fraternal twins.

So if people are genetically pre-disposed to drink, (or abuse other mood altering substances), does that make their abuse of these products an inescapable doom?

No, of course not, or no alcoholic would ever quit drinking, no crack addict would ever get clean.

What it DOES mean is that people who are prone to this illness deserve the provision of a range of supportive measures and an atmosphere of public debate that does not grow out of facilely condemning them as "weak willed" or somehow "bad".

Studies also show that it seems very likely

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