Humans sometimes draw conclusions which are overly reductive. "This person is an addict" is a very tidy and convenient explanation for a multitude of symptoms

Humans sometimes draw conclusions which are overly reductive. "This person is an addict" is a very tidy and convenient explanation for a multitude of symptoms which would otherwise be vexing to analyze and treat, and it also is a not-that-improbable answer in terms of the base rate. Keep in mind that these examples are cherry picked failures. Actually, when you consider that they're presumably the worst cases the author personally knew of-- they're surprisingly not that bad. None of them featured the patient being killed by police officers as a result of misdiagnosis of addicition and especially poor handling by the hospital... Even if we had chosen "make them easier to get" you'd still probably be able to find examples of laughably false addiction diagnoses resulting in poor care...