Aim: This paper discusses what type of legitimacy underpins addiction treatment in contemporary western societies.
Method: Broad review of the relevant literature.
Conclusions: The legitimacy of professional interventions and the future of service provision will depend largely on the relationship between the professional and the lay referral system. These in turn are intertwined with macro-societal changes. The basic categories in this relationship are, on one hand, the idea of evidence-based practice (i.e. the notion of using the most accurate scientific support for the choice of treatment interventions), and on the other hand the consumer perspective, which conceptualizes addiction treatment as an interactive process between the treatment provider and the consumer. The acceptance of addiction treatment depends in most cases on the client who chooses from a whole range of informal and formal problem solutions. To an extent, experts are thus controlled by their lay counterparts and need their consent to operate and succeed. This process is complicated by the trend towards evidence-based practice, which demands transparency and rigorous procedures and carries with it the basis for distrust in expert knowledge by displaying openly that every statement of fact is open to revision, and thus, to a certain extent, characterized by uncertainty.