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Comment by clint | Hacker News Reader

Since we're using bad analogies I would argue its more like being offered a piece of delicious candy and its great and you continue to eat the candy and its fine.

Eventually you wake up one day and decide you've been gaining too much weight and you try to stop eating the candy but to your surprise, over the past several months or years your brain chemistry has been subtly changed and now your physical well-being and mental state is literally tied to you continuing to eat the candy.

You can't stop and if you do you're in horrible pain and can't go to work, if you don't go to work you lose your job and if you want to keep working and not be homeless you keep eating the candy.

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Except most people know that heroin isn't like candy. The side effects and consequences of snorting a few lines of cocaine isn't some secret.

Most people think heroin isn't like candy.

The physical dependence is the same, and there are 4 times as many deaths that can be linked to sugar as drugs per year in the US.

The only difference is that heroin is illegal and costs a lot more than candy.

Firstly, "linked to sugar" is not "squarely caused by sugar".

Secondly, sugar use is extremely widespread. Much more so than use of heroin. Few people avoid ingesting some sugar.

Even if there were 4 times as many deaths confirmed to be squarely caused by sugar, that alone shows sugar to be far safer, since it has far more than 4 times the users.

But never mind, let's look at, oh, the lethal dose (LD50) info. For sugar, that is supposedly something like 30 g/kg. The LD50 for heroin (intravenous) is something like 20 mg/kg: more than a thousand times less.

Plus there is copious sugar in your bloodstream without which you'd be in hypoglycemic shock leading to death.

> Firstly, "linked to sugar" is not "squarely caused by sugar".

Correct - the same goes for "Linked to drugs" and "squarely caused by drugs".

> that alone shows sugar to be far safer

Sugar is safer than cocaine, but that does not make it safe. I shouldn't have said the only difference - sorry.

> But never mind, let's look at, oh, the lethal dose (LD50) info

This is too narrowly focused - the LD50 only refers to the immediate effects of a substance, not the long lasting effects. I'd argue that long lasting effects are more dangerous as they're less apparent.

> Plus there is copious sugar in your bloodstream without which you'd be in hypoglycemic shock leading to death.

Yes, our bodies need sugar and create it from the food we eat. I was talking about the food we call sugar ("Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food.)

I should use "added sugar" or "refined sugar".

You're right. Peoples' doctors rarely tell them to take anything that will risk them getting hooked on candy.

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