DUNCANIAN STUDIES CENTRE OF NEW SOUTH WALES

Duncanian refers to an approach to the study of addictive behaviours that was pioneered by Professor David Duncan of the United States. Dr. Duncan is both a psychologist and an epidemiologist, whose contributions to a public health approach to problems of drug abuse and violence have earned him the sobriquet, "the Stephen Hawking of public health."

It is common to describe any recreational drug use or any use of any illegal drug as being drug abuse. The Duncanian perspective rejects this prejudice.Instead it calls for a clear assessment of whether an individual's drug taking is harmful or not, without applying a different standard to illegal drugs than to legal ones.

Responsible Drug Use

Paul Glass, M.Phil.
Executive Secretary
The Duncanian Studies Centre
Randwick, NSW 2031
Australia
duncanianaussie@yahoo.com.au

Professor Duncan's theory of the nature and etiology of addiction is also known as the Self Medication Hypothesis. The theory that addictions arise from the use of psychoactive drugs to relieve psychic distress was proposed in 1974 in separate publications by Dr. Duncan and Edward Khantzian of Harvard Medical School. The Duncanian theory differs from Dr. Khantzian's psychoanalytic version in proposing that addiction is really just a special name that we apply to the well established process of negative reinforcement when drug taking behaviour is involved.

Professor Duncan was a pioneer, beginning in 1970, of the public health strategy that has come to be known as harm reduction. He was among the first to recognize that society had a far greater stake in preventing the harms associated with drug misuse than in preventing the misuse itself. There has never been a drug free society nor is one ever likely to be created and attempts to prohibit drug use seem to consistently increase the harm done to both the drug takers and to society.