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I once tried to make the argument that heroin addicts do not look like TV leads you to believe, on HN. It did not work out.

• tunap 10y ago
  As history as proven time and time again, the crowd loves a good witch hunt. Demonizing, deriding X is an incredibly effective tool of governance.
  • vidarh 10y ago
    It's also that most people don't meet "normal" people who admit to be heroin users, so they don't get a counter. With cannabis, anti-cannabis messages trying to portray cannabis users as all a bunch of layabout half-criminal pot-heads won't work any more because so many people know productive, intelligent, hard working normal people who use cannabis and are fine admitting it. I bought into that image of heroin users too, until I realised I'd worked with a heroin user for a long time without realising, and he didn't look like a wreck, and functioned well most of the time despite being a hardcore addict. When I then started reading up on it, I finally realised that not only can heroin addicts be high functioning people the same way alcoholics can, that you can't see it on most of the time, but most heroin users never get addicted the same way most alcohol users never become alcoholics, and it became impossible to hold onto my previously very strongly anti-drug views.