As an anthropologist, I have written much about how this deployment of shame and other forms of stigma in public health-whether purposefully or incidentally-is almost always unexpectedly harmful and so easily becomes a driver of health inequities.
There is no doubt that stigma-demonizing people based on their behaviors or other arbitrary traits-can be deployed as a powerful behavior change tool in public health.
Public health experts took a powerful stance: Don't just make it harder to smoke; make it harder to be a smoker. Alongside taxes and advertising bans, campaigns were rolled out that were designed to make smoking socially undesirable.
While a public stigma campaign worked for smoking, it should not be used for opioids, as it carries risks of exacerbating health inequities.
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