> You don't get somebody off heroin by lecturing them about how they should value their freedom; you switch them over to methadone for a while and let them slowly detox.
Really bad analogy. That's like saying the best way to quit smoking is to start chewing tobacco to give your lungs a rest.
Well is that not the point of nicotine gum and patches?
Anyway, it's a bad analogy because apathy regarding privacy is not an addiction. It's just apathy, informed or uninformed. Anybody who was likely to care about privacy but was ignorant/uninformed should not need to be weaned off privacy-abusing services. Anybody who was never going to care about privacy need not be pursued further.
> Well is that not the point of nicotine gum and patches?
Methadone really isn't analogous to the patch, though. It really is, at its core, replacing a socially unacceptable drug (heroin) for a socially acceptable variant (methadone).
The patch is used to help taper off the craving for nicotine by administering the same drug, but in a regulated dose which gradually decreases, and using time-release (skin absorption is much slower)[0]. Methadone doesn't use this model.
Interestingly, when heroin is administered in the same controlled setting that methadone is, it has better success rates and less recidivism than methadone does. These are known as "diacetylmorphine maintenance" programs.
[0] In other words, think of the patch or gum as "extended release" versions of cigarettes.
Somewhat, although this is tangential. A lot of that is because research has shown that a not-insignificant part of addiction is the social/behavioral side of things. Lighting up. Habit.
Nicotine gum and patches allow you to conquer one aspect of the addiction at a time, which may be more achievable for many.
Really bad analogy. That's like saying the best way to quit smoking is to start chewing tobacco to give your lungs a rest.