Authoritative voice from the distant past - Sir Humphrey Rolleston:

The key conclusions of the Rolleston Committee Report (1926) in UK are worth considering (again, still) today. "[Addiction] in most well-established cases must be regarded as a manifestation of disease and not as a mere form of vicious indulgence. In other words, the drug is taken in such cases not for the purpose obtaining positive pleasure, but in order to relieve a morbid and overpowering craving. ... It is true that there is a certain group who take the drugs in the first instance for the sake of a new and pleasurable sensation ... But even among these a morbid need for the drug is acquired and the use is maintained not so much from the original motive as because of the craving created by its use."
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