There is chemical addiction and psycho-reactive addiction. For example, LSD is not chemically addictive but its effects on the person makes it psychologically addictive but even then not for everyone. Porn as you noted is similar to LSD. But addiction means something you do repeatedly and you have trouble stopping yourself from doing that thing even though you put in signifcant effort through will power to do so.

Your argument if I understand correctly is that there needs to be a chemical/physiological dependence for the addiction to be legitimate but that is not correct. Addiction only needs to be something you can't easily quit doing for it to be legitimate.

Caffeine and even sugar (imho for sugar) can be addictive. And regulating sugar use because it causes diabetes when addicted to it is something I support(some places already do this on sugar-high products). Caffeine shouldn't be regulated because the levels of caffeine consumed by an addicted person as far as I am aware is not harmful.

For something to be regulated it must meet either one of two sets of conditions. The first condition is for any single consumer obtainable dose/interaction to be harmful. The second is for it to be addictive and regularly consumed doses of it must lead to eventual harm to the user. Porn meets requirements for thr second condition. Media consumption may arguably be addictive but the only thing harmful about it maybe componets of a social media (like/dislike) not the media itself and those components, saying they on their own cause harm is quite a stretch but they do affect different people differently.

> Few people will be "addicted" to porn when consuming it. Most people will be (actually) addicted to heroin when they consume it.

No, most porn users are addicted. Few porn users actually want to stop. "I can quit any time" said every addict ever. If you can stop consuming porn for a month then you are not addicted. But it is so hard, there is a yearly challenge most people fail called "no nut november" and out of those who succeed, almost all fall back to porn despite not wanting to after seeing improvement in their lives.

As far as harm goes, the amount of people that speak of the improvement in life quality after quitting and the amount of harm they endured prior speaks for itself.

Now, I can see you arguing heroin is deadly but porn isn't and hands down I would agree with you. But a substance does not need to deadly for it to be harmful.

A better to explain my suggestion would be to consider how people who actively try to quit porn and fail and consider its effect on their lives significantly damaging might feel about the regulation I suggested. Givem the scale of porn consumption and widespread reports of addiction and harm, shouldn't this be regulated (not censored) at least to where mass consumption places (like brothels are for IRL sex) get regulated for content creation conditions and audited to make sure only allowed individuals have access (not minors or people in sexual offender db) and warnings/help made readily available?

Since I spent so much time replying, can you elaborate what part of that suggestion prevents you from accessing the porn you want or how any of that infringes on your rights? After all, having products display warnings/hell isn't new and neither is having rules that make sure working conditions and counsumer id'ing are in place at businesses like pharmacies, hospitals, bars, car rentals/sales,etc...

So why is porn so special if I may ask and given how regular porn consumers looking for legitimately/safely produced porn are unaffected, why would you or anyone in this thread have a problem with it? People are helped and harm is reduced and you are not affected. Only porn sites have reasonable but increased cost.