Addiction now defined as chronic brain disorder – Health – Addictions – msnbc.com.  This is what we at a grassroots and professional level have been talking about.   Addiction needs a medical classification so we can simply deal with it at the right scale.  In a nation governed by a voting population, majority rules and the majority votes for legislators that say in many ways; let the addicts rot.  Can we afford to keep looking at a medical condition in this manner?  Even if 10% of the population deals directly with the impact of addiction, that’s  30 million people; addicts and their immediate family.   We argue, that when you calculate prison, emergency rooms, homelessness,  deaths, lost productivity the costs start to look something like a cabinet level budget.   We spend hundreds of billion of dollars annually on the disease by not dealing with it; so why not accept it and deal with it humanely.   It is chronic problem that doesn’t go away on its own.   Msnbc link by Tom G.