3 ms·
It strikes me how this article uses the language of an "epidemic," as if this is a disease that happens randomly to people. It's not. These drug users are del
by csense 11y ago
It strikes me how this article uses the language of an "epidemic," as if this is a disease that happens randomly to people. It's not. These drug users are deliberately chose to inject a substance into their body, knowing full well that this is a totally unregulated illegal industry, and there is a high risk of addiction, overdose, impurities and death.
They teach kids in school that drugs are bad. Maybe they need to make the education more horrifying, with pictures and videos of people showing in gruesome detail how their minds and bodies have been permanently damaged, or the cold corpses of dead addicts. Maybe they need to better explain the nature of statistical risk, telling you that even if you're fine the first, second, and third time, the fourth, fifth, or hundredth time can still kill you.
Why are people so dumb?
- tbabb 11y agoBrains are machines, and drugs damage them in such a way that the damage accelerates. If you think you are not driven by your own reward system, or that you are above it, you are laughably mistaken. By and large, you will do what your reward system tells you to, and your reserves to defy it are limited and finite. Be happy that yours is intact and mostly tells you to do things that are good for you (which itself is only by the grace of millions of years of random variation and selection on your ancestors, who more or less knew nothing of the potent drugs that exist in our habitat today), because once that system is damaged, you cannot simply will it to become fixed. Moreover, it looks like the Appalachian outbreak is due to patients falling into addiction as a result of established medical care, and simply falling through the cracks-- or perhaps even having dangerous addiction-risky treatments foisted on them by a drug industry overstating the safety or necessity of its products. Have a little sympathy. If the rates shown here continue, you may one day find yourself among the affected.
- fsloth 11y ago"Maybe they need to make the education more horrifying" To my understanding this does not succeed in modifying the risk behaviour of the intended target audience. Problematic drug abuse to me seems to be a symptom of other problems, not a lifestyle choice.
- Someone 11y agoEpidemic, in epidemiology, does not require random infection or innocence of victims. http://www.cdc.gov/ophss/csels/dsepd/ss1978/lesson1/section11.html http://www.cdc.gov/ophss/csels/dsepd/ss1978/lesson1/section1...: "Occasionally, the amount of disease in a community rises above the expected level. Epidemic refers to an increase, often sudden, in the number of cases of a disease above what is normally expected in that population in that area." I think they went that way because it is hard to separate "you should have known" from "you were unlucky". Of course, you should have known the water might be contaminated, that sex partners may carry diseases, or that jumping of high objects will kill you. The last is bloody obvious; yet, specialists talk about suicide epidemies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_epidemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_epidemic)
- slavik81 11y agoDrug education already demonizes drugs. The problem is that eventually the people you preach to will meet someone who is doing drugs and is perfectly fine, and they'll discover that you lied to them. Then they won't believe anything you told them. If you want to do drug education right, you need to use actual representative facts.