SALT LAKE CITY — U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske recently announced a personal change of course in his view towards drug addiction.

Kerlikowske's statements were made as the White House unveiled its new 21st Century drug policy — a policy that endeavors to bring an evidence-based, scientific response to a problem “which not only diminishes the potential of the individual, but jeopardizes families, communities and neighborhoods.”

“I’ve spent my entire career in law enforcement. For most of those 37 years, like most people, I believed that a person addicted to drugs had a moral problem — a failing, a lack of will," Kerlikowske director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy said. "I was wrong. Addiction is not a moral failing.”

The White House Blog tries to describe the problem: “The economic costs of drug use are enormous: In 2007 alone, illicit drug use cost taxpayers more than $193 billion in lost productivity, healthcare, and criminal justice costs. But the human costs are worse. Nationwide, drug-induced overdose deaths now surpass homicides and car crashes as the leading cause of injury death in America.”

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Solutions to the problem have been hard to come by. Kerlikowske presides over a drug war that he has not been winning. Misconceptions about drug use and drug users have contributed to the problem of finding meaningful solutions.

David Sheff, a journalist and author, has studied the issues in response to his own son’s struggle with methamphetamine.

“The view that drug use is a moral choice is pervasive, pernicious, and wrong," he wrote in the NY Times. "So are the corresponding beliefs about the addicted — that they’re weak, selfish, and dissolute; if they weren’t, when their excessive drug taking and drinking began to harm them, they’d stop. The reality is far different. Using drugs or not isn’t about willpower or character. Most problematic drug use is related to stress, trauma, genetic predisposition, mild or serious mental illness, use at an early age, or some combination of those. Even in their relentless destruction and self-destruction, the addicted aren’t bad people. They’re gravely ill, afflicted with a chronic, progressive, and often terminal disease.”

The White House report, “National Drug Control Strategy,” speaks to Sheff’s statement and Kerlikowske’s admission in its introduction.

“This policy underscores what we all know to be true: we cannot arrest or incarcerate our way out of the drug problem.”

Policy reform advocates second that notion. Journalist Nicole Flatow in her “Think Progress” article presented this reaction: “As the Drug Policy Alliance notes, drug courts are “where punishment is often the response to addiction-related behaviors such as positive urine screens or missed appointments.”

She then quotes DPA director Bill Piper, “Until the Drug Czar says it is time to stop arresting people for drug use, he is not treating drug use as a health issue no matter what he says, I know of no other health issue in which people are thrown in jail if they don’t get better.”

Jamie Lee Curtis, a well known actress and children’s book author, helps keep the humanity of the problem in the forefront. In a recent Huff Post Entertainment Blog she outlined some of her personal struggle with addiction.

“Listen, I can relate. I, too, found painkillers after a routine cosmetic surgical procedure and I, too, became addicted, the morphine becomes the warm bath from which to escape painful reality," she said.

"I was a lucky one. I was able to see that the pain had started long ago and far away and that finding the narcotic was merely a matter of time. The pain needed numbing. My recovery from drug addiction is the single greatest accomplishment of my life... but it takes work — hard, painful work — but the help is there, in every town and career, drug/drink freed members of society, from every single walk and talk of life to help and guide.”

So the national debate continues, incarcerate or administer, imprison or treat. The ramifications of that debate will define perceptions and approach to drug abuse and addiction for the next generation.

In the process of recovering from addiction Roger became a licensed addiction counselor and wrote the LDS recovery guide, “The Waterfall Concept, A blueprint for addiction recovery.” He blogs at his recovery website www.waterfallconcept.org

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