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Comment by throwboatyface | Hacker News Reader

This is just an op-ed complaining about your average culture wars stuff. "Taboos exist for a reason" is such a thought-terminating cliche, and it seems like it should be anathema to free thinking startup folks.

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The Atlantic has really fallen off and dove straight into the conservative culture wars in the last 2-3 years. It's really too bad as I used to really enjoy their publication for its thoughtful and culturally rich posts. I recently unfollowed them on instagram after the 127th clearly culture war fanning article lowered my brain cell count just from reading the headline.

That "do it with friends" billboard is such a dumb move at the very least. Harm reductionists... Jesus.

If you are going to use opioids it is unquestionably safer to do it with other people while at least some of them are sober-ish. You can't narcan yourself in a solo overdose situation.

And I agree with that. What I don't agree with is that this knowledge should be disseminated in the way it is done on that billboard, with a bunch of people shown having great fun. That is promoting drug use. That sends the wrong message to the kids. You'll have the whole generation growing up thinking any drugs are OK and just part of having fun together. This is horrible.

At the same time the text makes it fairly clear that it is dangerous to use. There's a reason it talks about having narcan and people checking on you, or doing it as a group - my takeaway from the billboard on the whole is that opioids are a scary thing to do with very real risk. It doesn't make me more likely to do fentanyl, but less.

I wouldn't have used that picture myself, but I also am not convinced it by itself is going to lead people to believe that doing fentanyl is a fun activity.

> Taboos exist for a reason

Except the article gives plenty of reasons why these taboos exist, and details some of the real harms associated with the lack of these taboos. On the contrary, your comment seems to be the one to want to hand wave away the concerns expressed in the article.

But they do exist for a reason. We evolved many extremely useful taboos, and this is one of them.

The value of culture is 1) the material prosperity it creates, 2) the emotional fulfilment it generates, and 3) how well it self-propagates.

Hard drugs destroy the first two, and by killing the user and innocent bystanders early, it interferes with the third. Much of America’s falling life expectancy can be blamed on drugs.

And yet it seems that there aren't many places where decriminalization, destigmatization and lack of efforts to limit supply have brought paradise on earth. Weed and tobacco takes years to fuck you properly, people seem to be able to drop and get clean from coke, alcohol, laughing gas and heroin. But fentanyl seems to be way more of a one way street.

>cliche >taboo >anathema

Yes, these all describe the same phenomena. Your anathema/taboo/cliché, is mine too. Probably.

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