In his column this morning, William Cope Moyers suggests a handful of questions that could be asked of McCain and Obama during tomorrow’s debate. If you’ve watched presidential debates over the last two decades, you may have noticed that our biggest public health problem (addiction, which cost us $534 billion in 2007) rarely gets mentioned, except in the context of our staggeringly ineffective drug war. We talk about the consequences of addiction (crime, poverty, skyrocketing health-care costs, and childhood abuse and neglect), but we rarely talk about addiction itself. 

Moyers proposes these questions:

Sen. McCain: How has your wife’s well-publicized fight against addiction to pain medication helped you to understand the role that treatment plays in assisting people like her in overcoming the problem?

Sen. Obama: What did you learn from your experiences using illegal drugs in college?

Sen. McCain: How would you fight the so-called war on drugs?

Sen. Obama: You oppose so-called mandatory minimum sentencing laws that affect a disproportionate number of people of color who get arrested for drug possession, especially for cocaine. What is your proposed alternative to those laws should they be repealed?

Sen. McCain: Is alcoholism a real disease or more just a reflection on weak moral character or a bad upbringing?

Sen. Obama: Do you favor the decriminalization of marijuana? Why or why not?

Debate Questions

And I have a couple questions of my own:

1) Blacks and whites use drugs at about the same rate, but black Americans are still ten times more likely to be jailed on drug charges? Is that fair? If not, what do you propose doing about it?

2) Increasing scientific evidence suggests that behaviors like gambling, overeating, and sex can, for millions of Americans, be as addictive as drugs or alcohol. Do you believe that we should broaden our prevention and treatment focus to include behavioral addictions?