Wow, this is Peak HN 2022.

Why blame England for the Opium Wars? Couldn't the Chinese just take less opium?

Why blame big pharma for the opioid epidemic? Couldn't people not take opioids?

Why blame cigarette advertisement for lung cancer? Can't people not smoke?

Well as far as “blaming Big Pharma for the opioid epidemic”, when drug abuse was affecting the “inner city” it was because of “poor morals”, “the lack of fathers” and “people not taking responsibility for themselves”.

But when drug abuse started affecting “rural and middle America”, it became “we need to treat drug abuse like a disease and not a crime” and “blame Big Pharma”.

I wonder what the difference could be…

As someone who stopped smoking in my twenties and has thus far refrained from Whatsapp/Facebook and does not watch superpower movies, really, I don't see why people cannot make the choice.

As a collective population, some percentage is in fact expected to make the choice. But why do you explicitly imply that they don't have a choice? Honestly interested, not trolling.

>But why do you explicitly imply that they don't have a choice?

I'm not. I believe people have free will and are not automatons. There is always a choice.

However, it is disingenuous to expect or demand most or many people to make "the right" choice, whatever that might be. Our choices are our own but they are, sometimes heavily, influenced by many things. There is a whole industry called advertising dedicated to just that. I've heard some tech companies are big on that.

Humans are not pure intellect, a brain wrapped in tin navigating through space always running an algorithm to decide the most optimal next step. Try to think why people smoke or took opium or overdose on whatever. Do it as an empathy exercise.

Sorry if I sound grumpy. No intention to be rude, honestly. Hn just sounds so inhuman sometimes.

> really, I don't see why people cannot make the choice

Because of the millions spent in advertising to induce people to choose what the corporations want. Tobacco ads were banned for a reason.

Perfectly good questions. As long as you're not forced to take anything, it's your choice and responsibility, not someone else's.

It's also their responsibility not to lie to the public just to create demand for their products. A doctor would not get away with these bullshit recommendations, why can these advertisers get away with it?

You haven’t been paying attention to the cozy relationships between doctors and opioid producers.

I've heard there's this new industry called advertising that is focused in swaying people in a certain direction. There's also this new contraption called mass media. Also there's this thing called wealth accumulation. It sure seems like putting those three together might kind of, sort of influence a large mass of people into doing certain things.

Because they're straight up lying when they say it's better than breast feeding. Encouraging mothers to breast feed is hard enough as it is, we really don't need some idiotic company spending millions in deceptive marketing designed to get them to stop lactating and become dependent on their products. This caliber of sociopathy is unacceptable no matter how they spin it.

Probably the vast misinformation campaign explicitly targeting vulnerable and undereducated people claiming that Nestle formula was superior to breast milk and would give their children a better shot at success in life.