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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

> people who use drugs (PWUD)

New acronym just dropped. :-/

It's consistent with the practice of using "people-first language"[1]. It sounds a little clunky to my ears in a lot of individual instances, but the overarching goal (making it harder to subconsciously dehumanize people) seems reasonable to me.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People-first_language

I just noticed it appearing fairly out of the blue in all the articles regarding the monkeypox spread; pretty much all outlets are using the same language viz "gay, bisexual or other men who have sex with other men."

It seemed extremely awkwardly worded but now I know why! Thanks for sharing that link.

Acronyms are dehumanizing! Someone’s grandfather might be an “alcoholic.” A “PHUA” is a subject being addressed at arm’s length by someone in a lab coat.

Well, that's sort of what this is: the article in question is written by and for medical professionals.

I actually agree, at least partially: I think both people-first language and acronyms have the potential to depersonalize, even if they prevent more general dehumanization. But I also think there are plenty of contexts in which their use makes sense, like an article written for a medical audience (like this one).

It doesn't seem reasonable to me. In this usage it is normalizing drug use. When you use this terminology, you're implicitly saying "They're a person and they just so happen to be addicted to drugs" as if that drug use doesn't imply anything about the person's character.

A drug user is not the same as a disabled person. If you're a drug abuser, I think the words people use to describe you are the least of your problems.

All this politically-correct clamoring accomplishes nothing in the end. If these new words like "PWUD" became widely adopted, they would just inherit the same stigma as their predecessors. It's happened time and time again.

It has nothing to do with improving people's lives and everything to do with providing lip service to a voting demographic. If you're not a politician, why waste your (and everyone else's) time with this doublespeak?

I don’t care either way about the acronym, but drug addiction has nothing to do with character. It is a disease and should be treated as such, and in fact the only proven way to stop drug addiction is through treatment.

You can't get addicted to drugs if you never take drugs in the first place. Absent situations like getting addicted to opioids after surgery, taking drugs does say something about your character.

Drug addiction is a biological phenomenon, but it can't happen without drug use, which is a social problem. For example, drug overdose death rates are six to eight times higher among white Americans than among Asian Americans: https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/press-release/drug-.... I'm pretty sure the biology of drug addiction doesn't meaningfully differ between those groups.

Being clunky is the point. The idea is that clunky phrases are harder to use as slurs, interrupting the euphemism treadmill.

Ah yes, because an acronym is more humanising that "drug user."

Sometimes I think people who are writing these dumb articles are living in a parallel world. Nobody in real life would use these expressions, the word they are looking for is junkie or addict. Are they trying to sound fancy or what?

Everyone who uses drugs isn't addicted to them.

And even if they were, it is pointless to use language like that in drug harm reduction material - it will make the users of drugs feel judged or alienated.

I think it’s just the euphemism treadmill in action.

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