How Science Has Revolutionized the Understanding of Substance Addiction

For much of the past century, scientists studying drugs and drug use labored in the shadows of powerful myths and misconceptions about the nature of addiction. When scientists began to study addictive behavior in the 1930s, people with an addiction were thought to be morally flawed and lacking in willpower.

https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugs-brains-behavior-science-addiction/preface