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.

Because they don’t care about others and want access to the resources that would be spent to help them. They see drug addicts as losers who can’t compete and want to keep them out of the game. They treat them the way they were taught to treat others, by being treated that way themselves.

It also depends what drugs we’re talking about.

There are definitely drugs much more likely to cause problems, even if you didn’t have any in the first place. And not everybody who runs into problems with drugs used them to cope with problems they had. Careless recreational use can lead to addiction all the same. Especially when the drug can create a physical dependecy, like alcohol or heroin do.

But it’s also a lot easier to blame drugs than to pin down societal problems that might lead people to problematic drug use.

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.

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.

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.

Easier and cheaper to actually do something about them.

If drought hits your country would you rather people focus on bringing water to the plants (lack of water is a visible, tangible, actionable cause of the problem) or start a meteorology department and wait for rain (because weather is the one that caused drought).

To make people not turn to drugs you need to provide them with a life worth living without drugs. I’m not talking utopian living. You want to turn people away from drugs? People who have their own house/flat, work less than 60 hours a week, have money to spend on hobbies after necessities like food or clothing, and have places to do those hobbies in. Those people do not turn to drugs. But those people aren’t obedient workers constantly stressed about chasing the goals of their employer. Those people aren’t exhausted sheep voting along party lines because they have no time or energy to research political topic themselves. If you are the government, you do not want those people existing at all.

As for marijuana - marijuana stalks can be turned into plastic-like but eventually biodegradable substance. So the reason marijuana was so demonized had nothing to do with drugs, but everything to do with it competing with plastic.

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.

First order effects easy to see, second order causes harder to see

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.

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.

Amplification - drugs /can/ turn a small problem into a huge one.

Plus sometimes people do start drugs for temporary or even trivial reasons - boredom, curiosity, peer pressure, even just availability - they don’t always need to be escaping something.

When they say drugs ruin lives, it’s a truism often enough to be accurate.

Because the problem is them sniffing leaded gas, instead of fresh air.

They should have just been born in 2000’s.

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.

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.