No subject is being changed. The assertion introduced in the root comment is about the effectiveness of public shaming as a means to sustain social order. There are many good replies arguing against that notion.

It is also the peak of naïveté to assume any mechanism of social control will remain restricted to our pet favorite cause. Isn’t that what every discussion here about encryption backdooors ends up concluding?

My (now suppressed) comment was actually about a sense of personal shame, not public shaming, (which I see as most often destructive)

Unfortunately, my writing was unclear and many people (understandably) misunderstood the context. Sorry about that.

Then law and order should be subjected to the same scrutiny. Indeed, it has been and still is illegal to be gay in many jurisdictions.

If shifting social mores was able to change laws in some places, I see no reason to assume that the shaming system cannot.

Actually my writing was bad, I didn’t even mean being ashamed of taking drugs, I meant being ashamed of doing socially harmful things that are often drug-abuse-adjacent in the USA.

Being ashamed of being an addict could lead to avoidance of treatment, so that might be a better example of a negative outcome of shame.