Reading HN, I get the strong suspicion many people didn’t grow up around drugs.
People don’t always think they are throwing away their lives. They think “this makes me cool” and “it’s no big deal” and “anyone who’s anyone does it”. Often there’s the confident assertion “this ruins other peoples lives but I’m too good/special for that”. And often they don’t even realize it’s a problem, even when they’ve hit rock bottom, even when they’ve ruined their families lives for their drug addiction.
I’m not claiming other, much sadder reasons don’t exist. Or that we shouldn’t do something to help people survive and recover, like this vaccine that could mean thousands of lives saved, thousands of fewer mothers crying at funerals.
But there is also a lot of personal responsibility involved, and we can’t make this claim, that I see so many people on HN try to make, that people who have ruined their life (and more importantly, often their families lives) thru their own choices have no responsibility. That it’s all fault of vague “society” and if we just ban together with <vague handwavy socialist/utopian/whatever vision>, that people will stop making bad decisions about their lives.
People don’t always think they are throwing away their lives. They think “this makes me cool” and “it’s no big deal” and “anyone who’s anyone does it”. Often there’s the confident assertion “this ruins other peoples lives but I’m too good/special for that”. And often they don’t even realize it’s a problem, even when they’ve hit rock bottom, even when they’ve ruined their families lives for their drug addiction.
I’m not claiming other, much sadder reasons don’t exist. Or that we shouldn’t do something to help people survive and recover, like this vaccine that could mean thousands of lives saved, thousands of fewer mothers crying at funerals.
But there is also a lot of personal responsibility involved, and we can’t make this claim, that I see so many people on HN try to make, that people who have ruined their life (and more importantly, often their families lives) thru their own choices have no responsibility. That it’s all fault of vague “society” and if we just ban together with <vague handwavy socialist/utopian/whatever vision>, that people will stop making bad decisions about their lives.