andrewpakers

SEEKING WORK | US + Remote | Product Marketing, Writing, Consulting

I have nearly a decade of experience in product marketing, primarily in the cybersecurity industry. I do some freelance work around content creation, such as white papers, blog posts, or infographics (I have a designer who can help). I can also create messaging guides and write ad copy. Lastly, I can consult on matters related to product marketing, such as hiring your first PMM, creating a strong working relationship between PMM and PM, or crafting effective messaging.

I've worked in identity and access management, cloud native security, DNS security, network security analytics, and more. I've helped take two startups to successful acquisitions, one of which experienced three years of hypergrowth before being part of a record-setting acquisition. Rates vary based on the scope of work.

Contact: andrew@andrewakers.dev Website: https://www.andrewakers.dev/

I caught Simon on the Latent Space podcast and have spent the last few weeks going through his blogs and various YT videos. As a former journalist, I’ve been wanting to try to learn some data journalism. Maybe I’ll try it when this is available.

What does the initial choice have to do with anything? As long as humans have existed, so has addiction. In all these centuries, prohibition has never helped. People use the fact that addiction starts with a choice - by the way, it doesn’t always - as an excuse to double down on failed policies that cost the public trillions of dollars, destroys families, and leads to massive amounts of death and human suffering.

It’s a complicated problem that requires many things to address. There are numerous studies on it. But criminalization is one of the least helpful things you can do. At every stage, criminalization makes it worse. It adds violence to the drug trade. It leads to an unsafe supply. It prevents people from seeking help in an emergency. Drug busts lead to more overdoses in the surrounding areas. It gives people a criminal history which prevents them from gaining employment, which massively reduces their chances of successful recovery. It creates a stigma, which prevents addicts from receiving the support they need to recover. Now this isn’t to say, you shouldn’t prosecute other crimes - robbery, etc., but you have to do more than just decriminalization.

That’s what SF struggles with. You need to provide addicts with a free, safe supply to stabilize the situation and prevent addicts from committing crimes to pay for their habit. Most illicit drugs are dirt cheap to produce. This would cost us a pittance. Then you need to provide support. Detox and maintenance drugs like suboxone. You need mental and physical healthcare. You need environments recovering addicts can live in, and then need to have a future. This means they need to be able to work. This is a big part. When felons can’t find work, things seem hopeless and they are very likely to relapse. We do everything we can in this country to set addicts up for failure. I honestly believe policy makers and law enforcement officials think the only good addict is a dead one. And we need a lot more research. I believe eventually, we can medically solve compulsive behaviors, but the incentives aren’t there right now.

And yes, all this would cost a lot of money. But we already pay and insane amount of money to not solve this problem. Law Enforcement consumes billions and billions. Billions of not trillions of dollars are funneled into the pockets of drug dealers. All the money lost due to adjacent criminal activity. And all the medical costs because we don’t help these people until it so bad that they are in crisis. Not to mention, you shouldn’t just ignore an epidemic because it is hard or expensive.

The problem in America is that we don’t want to address it. We don’t like to help people with “ugly” medical problems. We only like the good patients. Anyone with a disease that causes adverse social behaviors need to “help themselves”. Or at least they shouldn’t be allowed to be visible, even if it means they have to die.