Comment by integralid
2 days ago
You also probably don't use heroin. Everyone knows it's a bad idea and yet for some reason we have very severe punishments for people that distribute it. Why?
Because addictive things are addictive, and addicted people suffer, and everyone can get addicted if their guard slips.
We prefer to regulate highly addictive things instead.
About 1–12 months after using heroin, only 23%–38% become addicted [1]. Occasional and controlled heroin users do in fact exist and are documented [2]. And, most famously, the use of heroin by American soldiers during the Vietnam war was largely situational [3].
So what "everyone knows" here is not very impressive. I still very strongly believe you'd be a fool or at least reckless to try heroin, but it really isn't the bogeyman people want it to be.
[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...
[2] https://www.drugsandalcohol.ie/3906/
[3] https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.64.12...
>only 23%–38% become addicted
Wow, only Russian roulette with 2 bullets odds?
Yup, hence why only a reckless person or fool would try it.
But, since only a minority of people get addicted to heroin (i.e. the evils of heroin are overstated), and since no one is actually seriously arguing that viewing TikTok is as risky (23-38% chance after exposure) as trying heroin, or has as bad side effects, I think it reveals that comparisons to heroin use in arguments against TikTok are hyperbolic and disconnected from reality, by empirical data.
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I don’t get it, is this some kind of gotcha?
Have you walked down the skid row of any large city? Heroin and well other drugs now are a problem, saying otherwise is delusional. Those people need help.
Only for people who think comparing TikTok to heroin is some kind of gotcha.
For sure. Two minutes from where I live, at a main intersection, they hang emergency Naloxone injection kits, in public, where anyone can grab them, on the trees and walls of buildings. I presume so addicts can save each other in cases of accidental overdoses.
Of what relevance was this all to TikTok again? And why are we comparing scrolling a phone app to literal actual heroin? Even when, empirically and factually, heroin is in fact not addictive for the majority of people?
Comparisons between TikTok and heroin are deranged and simplistic, but this is made all the more embarrassing when you realize that a dance with heroin is in fact more likely than not to just be... not the thing everyone is afraid of?
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