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Addiction Markets

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384 points toomuchtodo | 4 comments | 31 Oct 25 17:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.674s | source
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mberning ◴[31 Oct 25 19:41 UTC] No.45775897[source]▶
I don’t have an overly paternalistic view of the government. I’m rather libertarian in that regard. But is it too much to ask that we place some guardrails on things that are know to have trouble with? Smoking, drinking, gambling, etc.

I certainly feel that people should be able to do it if they really want to, but making it super accessible and highly advertised seems like a bad idea.

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1. skippyboxedhero ◴[31 Oct 25 20:35 UTC] No.45776418[source]▶
There are guardrails. Gambling is legalised to introduce guardrails so that regulated providers can exist and provide a product that stops people using offshore.

Neither accessibility or advertising impacts rates of addiction. It is a real addiction. Does a lack of advertising stop heroin use? Behave.

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2. mberning ◴[01 Nov 25 02:16 UTC] No.45778734[source]▶
If advertising didn’t work to drive consumption no business would ever spend a dime on it. When your product has addictive qualities advertising absolutely increases the number of people that get hooked. This is something that was well understood in the past, for example the huge curtailment in cigarette advertising.
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3. energy123 ◴[01 Nov 25 05:47 UTC] No.45779504[source]▶
So the number of smoking addicts magically went down over the last few decades?
4. parineum ◴[01 Nov 25 06:04 UTC] No.45779569[source]▶
I want to chime in not necessarily to disagree but there is a lot of unknowns in how effective advertising really is and in a lot of cases, if it is at all.

Additionally, the curtailment of cigarette advertising wasn't because it was understood to be bad, it was because a bunch of politicians found it to be politically beneficial to "do something" so they threw everything at the wall. Increased taxes, counter advertisement, advertising bans, smoking bans in certain places, required packaging, etc. Who knows what actually worked, if any of it did.

We're seeing a big decline in alcohol consumption right now in younger generations right now and none of those things were done to cause it.