Wrong on both counts - drug addiction harms anybody connected with the user, and sexual abuse behaviors harm the behaver, just in much less obvious ways. This is the exact kind of rationalization people create to deny reality.
edit: Every single response to this comment is “they aren’t the same thing” because drug abusers only harm themselves and sexual predators only harm others. Wrong on both counts. Drug addition hurts everyone involved with the addict, and any kind of violence hurts the attacker, just in different and much less obvious ways. Instead of trying to rationalize refusing to help perpetrators get over being the way they are - because doing that would just make you complicit, and you crave vengeance! - maybe try to get over seeing everything as a binary choice between good and evil.
The harm to the people connected to the user, if you remove monetary aspects, is mostly grief about their loved one’s condition. Not physical harm (usually).
OTOH I don’t think addiction is an illness. It is a consequence of a poor decision which is hard to undo. Nobody is born an addict (unless your mother was a heavy addict too), and there’s no addiction germ. That said, consequences of a bad decision should be treated, not criminalized. If I decide to put my legs in the wood chipper, that’s a bad decision and I and my family will suffer from it. And I need medical treatment, not jail.
The harm to the people connected to the user, if you remove monetary aspects, is mostly grief about their loved one’s condition. Not physical harm (usually).
That was basically what I was going for in my reply, but it seems the person I was replying to was just looking for a straw man to attack. Thanks for reiterating.
I don’t know what to think in regard to addiction as an illness vs a series of choices. There’s so much we don’t know about our brains and our genes, and someday we may find that addiction is more attributable to biochemistry than to making choices. (Also, I’m a determinist, so I don’t believe “free will” can really exist. But I’m also a pragmatist, so I recognize that it’s useful for a society to operate under the assumption that people have agency and therefore can be held responsible for their actions.)
Wrong on both counts - drug addiction harms anybody connected with the user, and sexual abuse behaviors harm the behaver, just in much less obvious ways. This is the exact kind of rationalization people create to deny reality.
edit: Every single response to this comment is “they aren’t the same thing” because drug abusers only harm themselves and sexual predators only harm others. Wrong on both counts. Drug addition hurts everyone involved with the addict, and any kind of violence hurts the attacker, just in different and much less obvious ways. Instead of trying to rationalize refusing to help perpetrators get over being the way they are - because doing that would just make you complicit, and you crave vengeance! - maybe try to get over seeing everything as a binary choice between good and evil.
Oh niice. Violence hurts the attacker, riight, yeah, sure
The harm to the people connected to the user, if you remove monetary aspects, is mostly grief about their loved one’s condition. Not physical harm (usually).
OTOH I don’t think addiction is an illness. It is a consequence of a poor decision which is hard to undo. Nobody is born an addict (unless your mother was a heavy addict too), and there’s no addiction germ. That said, consequences of a bad decision should be treated, not criminalized. If I decide to put my legs in the wood chipper, that’s a bad decision and I and my family will suffer from it. And I need medical treatment, not jail.
That was basically what I was going for in my reply, but it seems the person I was replying to was just looking for a straw man to attack. Thanks for reiterating.
I don’t know what to think in regard to addiction as an illness vs a series of choices. There’s so much we don’t know about our brains and our genes, and someday we may find that addiction is more attributable to biochemistry than to making choices. (Also, I’m a determinist, so I don’t believe “free will” can really exist. But I’m also a pragmatist, so I recognize that it’s useful for a society to operate under the assumption that people have agency and therefore can be held responsible for their actions.)