Haven’t seen anybody successfully sue a alcohol company for being addicted to booze.

Tobacco then?

Pointing those out because in my current country (Australia), laws are being gradually introduced to - eventually - eliminate tobacco consumption.

eg plain paper packaging mandate, banning of smoking in more and more places, and potentially soon there will be banning of tobacco sales to people born before a point in time year (2005 maybe?) so they're never allowed to smoke

> potentially soon there will be banning of tobacco sales to people born before a point in time year (2005 maybe?) so they're never allowed to smoke

Minor typo: the ban will be for people born after a particular year, not before.

easier to enforce such laws in a low populated country such as Australia than in places like the US.

Australians generally live in big dense cities. In fact, this is probably why the ban will work, they are also more into rule of law than the USA is.

Also, vaping in Australia is illegal, making the ban even more impressive.

> Also, vaping in Australia is illegal,

I assure that it isn't. (I'm Australian)

I'm not saying it's good!

But it isn't illegal. The closest thing is that imports of nicotine vape products has been banned[1].

But you can still get them with a prescription and - more importantly - vaping itself is still legal with non-nicotine products. For example [2] is a story about how sweet flavored vapes are popular with schoolkids.

[1] https://www.tga.gov.au/blogs/tga-topics/nicotine-vaping-laws...

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-25/qld-ecigarettes-vapes...

> illegal

Don't you mean "legal"?

No, illegal as in “vaping is not allowed at all in Australia.”

Thanks, didn't realise that'd been made illegal as well. eg:

https://www.tga.gov.au/blogs/tga-topics/nicotine-vaping-laws...

Good. :)

Vaping is still legal. It's just illegal to import nicotine based vapes.

Why? Less population density means more places are without authority presence.

Oops, yeah. :)

You can absolutely find cases of companies getting in trouble for serving alcohol to minors. Or selling them cigarettes. Or running a secret casino/gambling business.

You cannot rely on people being responsible with substances and mechanisms that make them behave irresponsibly. That's the whole point of regulating addictive things.

> You cannot rely on people being responsible with substances and mechanisms that make them behave irresponsibly. That's the whole point of regulating addictive things.

This statement is so profoundly simple and rational and true.

My childhood was severely impacted by addiction in the family, and “It’s A Disease” is a refrain I’ve heard from every doctor and group therapist and concerned friend and public health official.

The problem with “It’s A Disease” is that when you have a drug-addicted family member, you spend years or decades being trapped in extremely emotionally complicated and potentially catastrophic situations over and over again, and often the ONLY way to break free of it is to do things, say things, and make decisions that are very deeply hurtful to both you and your own family. Things you’re not proud of, that no reasonable or kind or loving person would ever say or do to somebody merely for having a disease.

“It’s A Disease” turns the addict into an innocent victim of their own family.

Anyway, I’ve always thought the cyclic part of drug addiction was desire -> gratification -> withdrawal, with negative behaviors as a consequence of that. Seeing drug addiction as a cycle of one’s behavior toward a substance being altered by that very same substance, literally never even occurred to me. I can accept that and not blame myself or my family. Thank you.

It is the establishment you would sue.

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2021/08/texas-man-wins-5-5...

That was a default judgement so even if not immediately dismissed by the court it wasn’t really put to test.