I disagree. I think the issue is that we don't demand enough individual self-control from people. Individual self-control is supposed to be table stakes for being a mature adult and being treated as such. And teaching that skill (and it is a skill) to kids should be a necessary part of raising them. If "Just Say No" was not effective, I think it's because it didn't get enough traction in society--it didn't become standard operating procedure, to the point where it's just obvious to every adult that yes, you teach your kids to Just Say No to drugs, until it becomes muscle memory.
We're off on a tangent, but... I think you're thinking about people who don't really have an addiction (to the internet, or to drugs), but merely indulge more than they ought to and a little bit of moral rectitude they're alright again. If you had met hopelessly, chronically addicted people, the people for whom their addiction has utterly destroyed their life and they're pleading with you for help and they just keep getting worse and worse, I don't think you'd be so quick to say that all you need is individual self-control.
It is not merely the case that, faced with something potentially addictive, you just recall "Just Say No" and bada-bing, no addiction happens. Humans aren't robots. Humans get addicted to drugs and other activities, not just in social situations but also as a coping mechanism for life failures they can't fix, or see no way to fix. It can take years of psychological work to break the cycle of dependence, and in some cases it might not even be possible.
If you have time for a moving speech, listen to Craig Ferguson's monologue on his own alcohol addiction, his path to sobriety, and the constant vigilance needed to maintain it, which he gave rather than joke about Britney Spears' public freakout in 2007: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K46P7loICXY
> If you had met hopelessly, chronically addicted people, the people for whom their addiction has utterly destroyed their life and they're pleading with you for help and they just keep getting worse and worse, I don't think you'd be so quick to say that all you need is individual self-control.
I know there are such people, but they are a small minority. If "addiction" is only talking about them, then the response to the GP is simple: sure, "Just Say No" doesn't work for that small minority, but it can still work for everyone else, and shouldn't be discarded on that account.
My read of the GP is that they were not using "addiction" in this narrow sense, and my response was based on that interpretation. But they're welcome to correct me if I'm wrong about that interpretation.
My question would be: can we afford a better solution than "Just Say No" in a free society? Would a better solution be an overoptimization of outcomes, one that minimizes slack in the system, leaving the system brittle in times where that slack would have kept it from snapping? I.e., some neo-Weimar Republic phase looming ahead of us?
One recent example of this was the lack of free hospital beds at the height of COVID. In a pandemic, the overoptimization of nixing bed/supply reserves left no slack, leaving hospitals unfit to address the emergency.
