It’s an easy, comforting answer.

“That person’s life sucks because they do drugs” doesn’t raise any uncomfortable questions, and it makes avoiding a similar situation seem easy. “That person is using drugs because their life sucks” leads us to ask why their life sucks and whether the same thing could happen to us.

In addition to propaganda campaigns? It’s the same reason people try to shift the blame for most societal issues (financial, health, relationships) to a failure of personal responsibility.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pulling-through/202505/why-we-blame-the-sick

It’s a comforting lie people tell themselves because it gives them a false sense of control. Honestly, kind of the same reason people start doing drugs.

Drugs or other habits can help people cope when they can’t keep believing a comforting lie, but also feel driven to their breaking point by too much reality/need to find a way to escape from the pressure.

I’ve known people who has done drugs just because “party fun” and ended up hooked.

There are plenty of people out there. Some would have take on drugs because their lives where miserable, or even as a form of anesthesic, but other just because they were fun (at the beginning)

One of the most used drugs, tobacco, people start smoking “just because it’s cool”, and end up hooked for life. Never underestimate how addictive are drugs and how social pressure or just social behavior could make someone try a substance.

Because people don’t understand what they haven’t experienced. Like, at all.

A simple explanation of a complex problem

To answer your question, because they’ve never done drugs. people who blame the problem you describe solely on drugs don’t know anything about drugs, except that they’re scary and they hurt you.

Because fixing the PROBLEMS means the people in charge lose money to build functional, supportive social structures.

Much easier to throw victims in jail and monetize their “treatment” by privatizing poor people’s tax dollars.

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.

The problems causing drug abuse reflects on the speaker’s treatment of people and the people close to them, it makes them responsible for the fallout of their actions or lack of action.

Blaming the user absolves themselves of any responsibility.

You can apply that to pretty much any social ills, like poverty, homelessness, etc.

IOW, the person blaming the user: may have abused the user in some way as a kid, voted to end substance abuse education in schools, voted to end afterschool programs that might’ve kept kids away from abusive situations or drugs in the house, voted to limit or end food programs that would have allowed people to not become completely destitute and take to drugs for escape, and so on.

We don’t deal with the root cause because it’s expensive, time consuming, complex and some people will get offended (ie: most of our problems are a result of bad parenting - adulting not knowing how to regulate themselves, adults being too exhausted from work, adults not knowing how to mirror etc. ). Symptoms are what’s treated. Ie: in the us the focus is on getting you back to work/ be productive and not solving your depression, anxiety whatever.

It is very useful for collecting votes, justifying increased spending, and is ultimately lucrative. A lot of political topics are like this, IRL reality is more complex and no one has a silver bullet

Because you live in Usonia.

This certainly isn’t the case with my country,
the Netherlands, where the problem is considered one of regulation
or with China, where the problem is considered one of national security and imperialism.

The pod " cool people who did cool stuff" with Margaret killjoy did a series on safe use sites and the “drug user liberation front” recently. Definitely worth a listen if youre into this subject.

Can’t that be the same for other things? Drugs, violence, guns, gangs, etc.

Nobody should want to do those things with a healthy mindset.

Not necessarily a proper answer, but…

Captain Ketamine is supposedly worth over $2 trillion…