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Comment by ehnto | Hacker News Reader

At some point we end up defending the freedom for corporations to exploit people though. I think addiction is one of those times.

If a company has a product that relies on addiction mechanisms to succeed, that is a different situation, that is a corporate entity exploiting citizens for profit.

Cigarettes are a great example of where we can draw lines in the sand. If you want to smoke them go ahead you have that freedom, but I think companies should be banned from putting nicotine in them. Simple and obvious lines in the sand.

Vapes, whatever, smoke your bubblegum water. Vapes with nicotine? Clearly exploitive behaviour. Yes they can help you quit, but quit what? Nicotine addiction! If it weren't in cigarettes already you wouldn't need to quit it.

Social media is harder to draw lines in the sand for, but I think algorithmic feeds may be one place to target regulation.

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Both cigarettes and vapes are ways of consuming a drug. Are you just plainly against drugs? We know how blanket bans on drugs have gone historically and besides the obvious personal freedoms that are lost by mandating what people can and cannot put into their bodies (hello bodily autonomy??), trying to prevent people from consuming drugs does more harm than good (like prohibition, the war on drugs etc).

This ruling was about liability, in that an entity created a product with risks without disclosing them. It's actually worse, they purposefully engineered the product to be harmful. Thus they are liable for that harm. This is subtly different from banning these products - arguably many products that are sold are harmful, the difference is that they either are not acutely harmful (junk food), or the acute harm is well known (alcohol, cigarettes). Some countries mandate disclosure at sale or on the packaging as well.

I won't use new Reddit because of its infinite scroll but old Reddit you have to press next which I find doesn't keep me as addicted

I wish all companies had to provide a non infinite scroll option for their products, YouTube, Facebook, Google, Tiktok

But an adult is and should be allowed to develop a nicotine addiction. The reason why people do above all else is that nicotine is an intoxicant and (to most people) pretty pleasant. It's a rational choice.

It's addictive, but the price of quitting is a few weeks of cravings. It's not like alcohol (which is relatively uncontroversial) or opiates.

Don't let them sell to kids. Include scary images on the box. Whatever you do, the truth is that human beings like their drugs and this one isn't really that bad.

Should an adult be allowed to develop a heroin addiction? Why or why not?

The difference between heroin and nicotine, practically speaking, is that one of them will ruin your life and make you a burden to everyone around you and the other one will make you a little grumpy.

What about cocaine? I know high-functioning people addicted to cocaine. Should that be allowed?

Honestly? I wouldn't stop people developing drug addictions until they're a burden to society. The "war on drugs" was never going to be able to stop drugs from coming into the US, but it DID stop regular people from having to deal with junkies on their street.

I wish that more people would understand that this was the real success of the policies, and be honest with themselves that it's the only real reason they were enacted. We should obviously offer support for addicts to quit their substances, but I don't think the police should get involved until they're making a nuisance. Criminalize importing and selling cocaine, not possessing it. If there's a homeless drug addict making the neighborhood feel unsafe, arrest them for that and not the drugs.

>But an adult is and should be allowed to develop a nicotine addiction.

Says who? Addiction is never rational, that's what makes it addiction. Ffs.

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