I can see some sense in this take; I’ve personally succumbed to predatory gambling services in years past, and can attest from personal experience that successfully quitting one addiction leaves me exceedingly vulnerable to pick up a different one. I rotated through six different highly-damaging vices, before settling into a relatively less-harmful vice, and I was grateful to find myself there.
And that’s my point: you are in expectation doing someone who is inclined to addiction a favor by forcing them off of a particularly bad addiction.
You would be doing them a slightly bigger favor if you provide a much less-harmful replacement addiction at the same time. For me, the holy grail was to find a net-positive activity to slot into the addiction-shaped hole in my brain, and after a lifetime of struggle, I finally got “reading pop nonfiction books” to replace “scrolling social media”, the first real Good in a long line of Lesser Evils.
Thanks for the comment, and I agree that it would be helpful if the debate on this topic could focus on the question of ‘how do we encourage people to take up a less harmful addiction’—like vaping vs smoking—rather than typically jumping to the question of ban / don’t ban.
I can see some sense in this take; I’ve personally succumbed to predatory gambling services in years past, and can attest from personal experience that successfully quitting one addiction leaves me exceedingly vulnerable to pick up a different one. I rotated through six different highly-damaging vices, before settling into a relatively less-harmful vice, and I was grateful to find myself there.
And that’s my point: you are in expectation doing someone who is inclined to addiction a favor by forcing them off of a particularly bad addiction.
You would be doing them a slightly bigger favor if you provide a much less-harmful replacement addiction at the same time. For me, the holy grail was to find a net-positive activity to slot into the addiction-shaped hole in my brain, and after a lifetime of struggle, I finally got “reading pop nonfiction books” to replace “scrolling social media”, the first real Good in a long line of Lesser Evils.
Thanks for the comment, and I agree that it would be helpful if the debate on this topic could focus on the question of ‘how do we encourage people to take up a less harmful addiction’—like vaping vs smoking—rather than typically jumping to the question of ban / don’t ban.