Drug abuse 

"Before I attempt to do a major revision on this article, I would like to get your opinion on the title. I notice that substance abuse redirects to drug addiction, so what is the current consensus for keeping drug abuse as a standalone article? It seems to me that drug abuse should redirect to substance abuse, and an attempt should be made to split substance abuse issues off of drug addiction. What do you think? If you disagree, in what direction do you want to see the drug abuse article go, and what topics do you think it should focus upon? I was thinking it could examine the scientific, poltical, and social aspects." -Viriditas

I believe the drug abuse article existed to coincide with the drug use article (which is a redirection to recreational drug use).  It could also be a matter of renaming articles to the most accepted NPOV term, and having appropriate redirects.

I agree that substance abuse is a more correct title for the article, but then such an article (substance abuse) should also include information on alcohol abuse, which currently has its own page as alcoholism.

The drug addiction page has some POV problems.  What should be done here is to leave 'drug addiction' itself under the domain of Addiction, and rename the drug addiction page (with all its references to brain chemistry, and method of action) to Drug dependence.  Anything addiction specific should be moved to the addiction page.

I'm more of an advocate of giving separate topics their own pages of proper NPOV naming (even if they are stub articles) as long as those pages are well linked into from relevant pages.

My vote would be to make substance abuse it's own page talking about substance abuse in general, and have it reference other pages talking about specifics of chronic abuse the different substances (i.e. alcoholism).  Specifics of problems with certain substances can have their own pages.  I'm certain that all the individual drug pages have plenty of information that can be moved off to specific abuse pages.

I'm certain that some will be opposed to separating the "good and the bad" of different substances into regular pages and abuse pages (consider Alcohol > Alcoholic beverage > Alcoholism), but if alcohol is treated that way, then other substances deserve the same consideration.

If people disagree, then I'd argue that the alcoholism and alcoholic beverage pages should likewise be combined.   23:23, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)