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.

The drugs mess up your brain chemistry. Yes, they were in a bad place and did drugs. Being in a bad place didn't make them engage in prostitution, break into cars, share needles, sleep outside, not brushing their teeth, not shower, etc. The drugs did that, and the drugs will keep them in that state until they hit rock bottom or die. You are correct that economic blight causes drug addiction, but drug addiction causes peoples' lives to get so much worse.

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.

A simple explanation of a complex problem

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 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.

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.

Because it's simpler than admitting/dealing with systemic issues. It's easier to imagine that someone doing drugs isn't human than it is to ever imagine you could be there yourself.

It's a lack of empathy.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

A popular theory among self-proclaimed paychonauts, or people that like to experiment with drugs, but mostly psychedelics, is that using mind-altering substances could lead to ideas or insights that could be (considered) a threat to the status-quo. This is why the powers that be often demonize all drugs equally.

As others have pointed out, many people don't really like to think about the systemic issues in society that drive people into poverty, homelessness or other problems that often go hand on hand with drug addiction.

It should be pointed out, though, that some drugs can and most likely will ruin your life. The first rule of experimenting with drugs is never, ever try heroin (or other opiates).

Talking about the problems and circumstances people face which may lead to substance use (including alcohol and THC) is still stigmatised and socially taboo in the community compared to the simplistic conversation about effects of substance use.

Can you imagine if we all spoke openly about the problems and various forms of abuse, neglect and violence in the community?

I'm professionally neck deep in this, and still people turn to coping mechanisms before opening up. It's rather sad.

Because the human mind is preconditioned to prefer simple solutions that confirm pre-existing beliefs and biases, especially if they feel good.

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.

Not a lot of vocal people that had big problems, almost turned to drugs, but didn't, and noticed they still had problems.

Why do people with problems assume other people don't have problems, or have strength, or emotional maturity? We are all fragile and barely hanging on. All of us.

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.

It's not either/or, it's a self-reinforcing cycle, though it isn't usually the drugs themselves that start it.

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

it's the narrative pushed by the government, and most people are insufficiently wary of the stories they are told by the powers that be.

if people abuse drugs because of a history of generational and personal trauma at the hands of racist, capitalist, i and imperialist forces, then the obvious answer is to counter those forces. if people abuse drugs because they're just bad people who make bad decisions as part of an immutable personal failing, it is far easier to justify criminalizing drug use, imprisoning drug users, and using them as slave labor to fuel the machine.

at least, that's definitely what's going on in the US.