Every substance use or abuse requires a degree of faith. Faith is defined an attitude of the entire self, including both will and intellect, directed toward a person, an idea, or—as in the case of religious faith—a divine being
However what’s more important is the brilliance of the proof and eventually the consequences for an individual person or a population who engages in a practice. This means that having an insight beyond the ‘empirical’ data of things especially is a more elevated furnishing independent of practice! We are selecting for the purpose of this review, an example such as tobacco which has quite a robust profile as being psycho-pathogenic and public health concern.
So, let’s identify a handful of tobacco leaves with samples for our opening assumption. First, William Blake, English writer whose writing matured from the Inspirations of The King James Bible encourages us as par the handful of tobacco leaves to ‘To see the world in a grain of sand-Auguries of Innocence’ which is a rendering of the Classical King James Bible quote( Walk in the spirit and not in flesh: Romans 8:4).
Next, we come to the manufacturer who brands and processes our handful of tobacco leaves with Style and Golden tones in a calculated production scheme supported by a robust media drive and marketing campaign targeted at individual persons, even typical sub-groups in a population such as adolescents.
And this one............ Aresa, A Danish Company develops RedDetect, a bio-technology which uses Tobacco plants to identify buried landmines. (Scientific world, Tobacco shows whereabouts of Landmines, Rural 21. The International Journal for Rural Development. Volume 53. NO 5. 2008)
All of our samples are different states/schemes of knowledge. What remains for discourse are the exposition, expansion and dissection of the choices related to these state/schemes of knowledge. This is important especially in the arena of public health, where information and knowledge are the critical lines for engagement and where the souring, quality, coverage, extension and sharing of information and knowledge leads to consequences for the individual person or a population. Neo-functionalism, a sociological paradigm mirrors individual persons and population has been essentially composed and guided in social functioning by space and time (time in this case being a realisation of the structure, essence, proof and validity of information or any other form of knowledge). Making choices or will-power is also integrated into the neo-functionalism paradigm.
In the light of this review, presenting alternatives of information and knowledge schemes is the identified strategy for recognising and countering dysfunctional knowledge and practices related to substance abuse. If Tobacco is fittingly discovered as a plant-marker that can identify landmines (as has been stated earlier on) leading to benefits in the security and safety; the next hypothesis is where then should a population’s decision making priority swing? In granting concessions to packaging and processing tobacco for recreational purposes or investing in the employment of the virtues of the tobacco plant? (Perhaps for many more real/ functional purposes maybe in the environmental management and clean-up sector.)
Individual persons who are presented through public health advocacies with these alternatives of information and knowledge schemes (for example as has been identified in the case of tobacco) are also being engaged with a platform for the re-evaluation activities for their choices and the possibility of breaking the cycles and consequences related to such substance abuse such as addiction and life threatening health problems.
1(Macquarrie, John. "Faith." Microsoft® Encarta® 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.