I was never heavy into drugs but I smoked weed a fair bit in my 20s, knew a lot of other daily users of weed as well as some harder drugs. I don’t think I ever came across a person that randomly decided to do drugs for no reason one day and got hooked. They were all people who had pretty messed up problems in their life that were too complex for them to fix on their own.
So it confuses me when people instantly assume that someone is in a bad situation due to drugs rather than them using drugs to deal with a bad situation. And yes I know drug abuse makes problems worse the vast majority of the time but it’s not what I see as the root issue in a lot of cases, the drug use is a symptom/coping mechanism for people that society have let fall through the cracks.
IMO the thought sequence goes: I’ve had struggles in my life and I’ve always had the option to use drugs to deal with it, but I didn’t. And most people around me feel the same way. So when I see other people with struggles turn to drugs, it’s their own fault for not being as strong willed as me and my ingroup. And when drug users cause problems in our society, I don’t feel bad for whatever happens to them, because it’s their own fault.
But clearly not all life struggles are comparable, not everyone has the same system of support around them, not everyone has the same genetic predisposition to addictions, and probably 100 more variables.
But a war on X is rarely about everyone in a society coming together and deciding that we should crack down on X, and more about a party/demagogue using X as a scapegoat for real, systemic issues that they have no idea how to solve. People hear politician make loud, confident speech about solving all problems using war on X, and people say “sure, sounds reasonable, do that, just solve it.” Obviously it won’t, the question is just how much damage the demagogue will do before people catch on.