Obviously, you must balance the harm of the intervention itself with the harm that the intervention is trying to mitigate.

In fact many of your measures are already in place. Civilized society does control your diet, through food regulation. It controls what you watch to some extent - you'll have to go a bit out of your way to find sex and violence. Alcohol is indeed a restricted substance, and many injury-prone sports have been discontinued or modified to be safer, although some (like boxing) continue despite solid evidence of terrible cumulative injury - to great controversy. I'm not sure what you're going for with the pre-crime thing...

There's no need to equate "my business" with "draconian control".

No they don't. I can grow my own food and it is perfectly legal and loads of people do exactly that.

> you'll have to go a bit out of your way to find sex and violence.

Hardly. It's all over the internet. Even teens easily find it.

> Alcohol is indeed a restricted substance

Not for adults though, which is what we are talking about here, right?

> any injury-prone sports have been discontinued or modified to be safer

Only commercially. I can engage in the vast majority of the more dangerous version of those sports in my own free time any time I want. Play American football without helmets in my own backyard? Who is going to stop me?

So no, none of the things you mentioned are controlled to the point of being illegal. And even in rare cases where they are illegal (buying raw milk for example), no one gets thrown in jail for five years for doing it, and people do continue to do it and take those risks, and society does continue to pay when things go wrong.

> Obviously, you must balance the harm of the intervention itself with the harm that the intervention is trying to mitigate.

Who decides that? Because I find it difficult to put a measure on the cost of removing so many freedoms trying to make life risk free. It's not a society I would want to live in. I will temper that by saying I'm fully in favor of requiring people to wear masks in public. But only because it's a public emergency and in unusual circumstances I'm flexible. But what you are suggesting is long term and permanent policy.

That being said, there is an epidemic of childhood diabetes and _newborn_ obesity, which is entirely due to mother's high sugar & processed foods diets. It's a serious matter.

Also, it's possible to be a long-time user (obviously not a abuser) of heroin or meth (I know it's not exactly comparable but consider people taking adhd meds).

I'd take that over abusing sugar, which will cause fatty liver, diabetes, and cancer.

With the realities as they are coca-coal is probably safer, but because it’s cheaper, won’t have unexpected adulterants, and you won’t have to invest much time or effort in finding a new supply if your favorite vending machine breaks down.

I like that you spelled Coca-Cola "coca coal" :)

"Having a high BMI during pregnancy has been linked to an increased risk of various health problems for a baby, including:

    Birth defects
    Being significantly larger than average (fetal macrosomia)
    Impaired growth
    Childhood asthma
    Childhood obesity

[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/pregnancy-week-...

I’ll grant you that sugar has a higher total social cost, because more people are addicted to it.

Diabetes is far more dangerous than legal and medically supervised heroin. So you got that wrong. What else did you get wrong?

Alcohol addiction is worse than sugar addiction without a doubt, I can agree with that.

Diabetes is a very serious disease. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out a cocaine addiction is safer long term. You would really need to back up your claim with stats instead of just continuing to insist.

I don’t feel like my claims are controversial at all. Take cocaine. It’s use often leads to psychosis. Snorting cocaine damages the nose significantly. Injecting cocaine is probably the worse drug for the number of punctures a person will do because of the short high and incredible addictive nature of the drug. Cocaine damages the cardiovascular system. It leads to ulcers. It decreases appetite so strongly it often leads to malnutrition. Cocaine increases the risk for seizures and strokes. Cognitive impairment often occurs after long heavy use. This is completely ignoring the social costs of cocaine use, which are significantly higher than being diabetic. The cartels don’t profit from insulin.

I’d rather be diabetic than have years of heavy cocaine use behind me. I’ve been close to people with type 2 diabetes and people that went through cocaine addiction.

Well yes, and a thread about why recreational drugs should be legalized to reduce harm. But either way we should not be comparing the legal use of one substance to the illegal use of another. It's a mostly useless comparison when it comes to the nature of the substances and mostly useful to talk about the risks of prohibition.

As far as your other claims, I already said "You would really need to back up your claim with stats instead of just continuing to insist."

Anecdotal evidence about your friends and which addiction you would prefer don't do anything to move the conversation forward, so lacking stats and evidence about your claims, I'll stop here.

The hypothesized causes of meth mouth are a combination of MA side effects and lifestyle factors which may be present in users:

Dry mouth (xerostomia)

Clenching and grinding of the teeth (bruxism)

Infrequent oral hygiene

Frequent consumption of sugary, fizzy drinks

Caustic nature of methamphetamine (less likely: “Meth mouth is generally most severe in users who inject the drug, rather than those who smoke, ingest or inhale it.”)