Drugs have a pleasure effect on the brain. Food does too. So do experiences or playing sports. Winning a sports game feels exactly the same as doing cocaine. Issue with drugs is the risk. Risk of damage to your body or your mind. But the other activities have associated risk. For example, I ski and including back country. I risk avalanches and injury. I've broken a rib and have countless other injuries. I have friends with permanent injuries and have seen deaths on the ski slope. No one says skiing is a national problem.

Do insulin users have a drug problem? I think at the core of the issue is that our society generally regards psychological ailments as a personal flaw, rather than a health issue. (I’m talking generally, not about the professor from the article)

Even worse, I think it's treated as a modern version of demonic possession, where the cure killing the patient isn't considered enough of a reason not to deliver the cure.

> Do insulin users have a drug problem?

How many insulin users lose their jobs, lose their homes, turn to acquisitive crime or prostitution to fund their insulin habit?

We can talk about how many people who use heroin this happens to, and how much it's caused by current drug prohibition laws, but it's more than zero.

Decriminalisation makes a lot of sense but we need to be realistic about the harm caused to about 10% of people who become addicts.

Unfortunately, insulin users in the United States are sometimes forced to turn to more nefarious means of getting money to support their body from dying. I've known 2 people who died that were unisured and broke who died from not being able to support their dependency on it. Universal Healthcare should cover those dependent on Insulin and Heroin

> How many insulin users lose their jobs, lose their homes, turn to acquisitive crime or prostitution to fund their insulin habit?

It’s really difficult to disentangle this from the illegality of the drug.

>Do insulin users have a drug problem?

Insulin users don't just need to have insulin for the sake of it. They have a medical issue that forces them to take it.

>I think at the core of the issue is that our society generally regards psychological ailments as a personal flaw, rather than a health issue

I think that our society tends to do the inverse: tends to see all kinds of personal flaws as issues beyond the control of the person.

Yes, they do for the most part. Most insulin users are T2DM, and a large portion of these are able to get off of it over time.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5357144/

That's a false equivalence and you know it. Insulin is not a recreational drug

This article is very clearly about recreational drug use

I was not talking about recreational drug use. Please read my full comment before replying.

insulin doesn't make you suck dick in an alley to get a fix