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August 28, 2008
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eNewsletter - April 13, 2007
Name changes proposed for key federal agencies to help reduce stigma
Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) joined other members of Congress to introduce a bill that “is a small but important step towards stripping away the social stigma surrounding the treatment of diseases of addiction," according to Biden. Under the bill, S. 1011, The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) would become the National Institute on Diseases of Addiction, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) would be renamed the National Institute on Alcohol Disorders and Health.
Faces & Voices of Recovery and other national organizations supporting policies that will make long-term recovery a reality for even more Americans support the name changes. Representatives Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) and Jim Ramstad (R-MN) announced that they will be introducing a companion bill in the House at a March screening of HBO’s Addiction on Capitol Hill. At Faces & Voices’ 2005 Summit in Washington, DC, recovery advocates asked Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, about the use of the word “Abuse” in the agency’s name and she indicated that it was something that she would look into.
According to Sen. Biden’s press release, changing NIDA’s name removes the pejorative term “abuse” from the Institute’s name and properly helps to distance that notion from the disease of addiction. It also more clearly links the concepts of addiction and disease, a connection that scientific study clearly supports. Identifying addiction as a neurobiological disease will diminish the social stigma, discrimination, and personal shame that is often a barrier to seeking treatment, and it will further a common understanding of diseases of addiction.
Changing the name of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to the National Institute on Alcohol Disorders and Health would help to better reflect what the Institute now does. The previous name is a vestige of the Institute’s inception as a component of the former Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration. At that time, almost all of the NIAAA’s responsibilities were to provide alcohol treatment and prevention services. In the intervening years, Congress passed laws that strengthened NIAAA’s research responsibilities and transferred its non-research programs to agencies including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.