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Comment by morcheeba | Hacker News Reader

I think it's a step in the direction of personal freedom, because addictive substances are kinda the opposite of free will.

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Yeah, till the day the concept of being addicted to read the wrong books arise.

That's an inapt slippery slope analogy. The supposed bastion of freedom, the US, still has states where books are banned. And abortion is functionally banned.

Not all freedoms are the same. Losing one doesn't equate with losing all of them. Equating the freedom to become addicted (or indebted perpetually) is not the same as the freedom to read or travel, etc.

Who gives the right to define something as addictive and therefore, bad, and other stuff as not and therefore virtuos. Why do we got the right to moralize some stuff as being "an slave of a substance". Aren't we all slaves of water, nutrition, companionship, shelter? Why do I get to feel superior to the cocaine user?

> Who gives the right to define something as addictive and therefore, bad

Data. Decades of data and the societal costs of ignoring addictive substances. The rest of your comment is a set of false equivalencies.

Heard the same from other moralists for quite some time about marijuana. They had tons of "data" about the societal costs of it.

This gets really messy when you start talking about physical addiction versus mental addictions. Not to mention substances that are only physically addictive to some people.

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