Legal & regulated drugs generally don’t cause as much damage as legal & regulated gambling.
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2023/11/6/23931877/alcohol...
Of course they could have externalities too, but their blast radius is mostly contained to their near circle of family instead of the entire society.
So to you there's no difference between someone voluntarily and consciously choosing to wear a diaper so he can continue doing an activity for longer without toilet breaks(some video gamers do that too), and someone who is soiled himself because his mind can't control the bowel movements due to being fried by hard drugs?
Yeh, they're technically both addicts, but gambling addicts tend to harass less people and cause less overall ER calls, petty crime, trash, feces in the neighborhoods, than hard drug addicts.
One is a much greater annoyance to general people on the street than the other. What actual arguments do you have to refute this other than just calling it splitting hairs?
You tried to establish mutual exclusivity between conscious decisions and mental illness.
I refuted that.
Never said the impact on society of your examples were similar.
The same illegal drugs used by the lower echelons of society is the same as the ones used in higher echelons of society. You’d be hard pressed to find folks not using hard drugs in the Fortune 500 list.
The difference is the availability of drugs. Many rich people never struggle to find high quality drugs. That is not the same for everyone.
Oh for sure, the big difference is that rich people can afford to go into the best private rehab whenever they cross the line, whereas working class people tend to end up broke, homeless and sick.