Nowhere is this tension more apparent than in Alaska, a state addicted to oil that's literally melting under the weight of climate change.
In 2011, the Wisconsin medical board reprimanded him for using "tele-psychiatry" to treat five out-of-state addicts he had seen only over Skype.
States addicted to tobacco taxes need a large and renewable supply of smokers, so they wince whenever an e-cigarette displaces a traditional cigarette.
Yet there is a chronic shortage of beds in the state for addicts who want help.
There are two reasons, he said, why welfare is so important: regular benefits keep people out of a criminal underclass and the welfare state allows addicts to kick the habit by bringing stability to their lives.
"It's not only individuals addicted to gambling, we now have state governments addicted," said Tom Grey, field director for Stop Predatory Gambling, a nonprofit group based in Washington that opposes the spread of casinos.
I shall argue that if we broaden the focus from the role of dopamine in addiction to its role in the brain more widely, we have good reason to think that the dopamine signal causes the addict to enter into a doxastic state: the addict sees the drug as good.
"The state is addicted to the revenue," Eby told me.
His long-awaited scoop is less a triumphant unmasking of evil than the slow realisation that, in a state so addicted to oil, the truth is as mazy and unfathomable as the poisoned delta waters.
By changing the rules to cover tax breaks, the commission hopes to nip their growth in the bud.The ultimate cure for the state-aid addicts does not lie in tinkering with procedures or in giving the commission more power or, indeed, in Brussels at all.
