Agreed. See for instance https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/05/upshot/opioid... with a graph showing US drug overdose deaths are far higher now (well, as of 2016 estimated data) than ever before.

There are indeed many drug panics. This one is the real thing.

I had no idea that drug overdoses are the number 1 cause of mortaliy for people under 50 in the US. Ok I don't live there, and I know from the web and talking to US citizens it's not all as sunny&happy as some media wants the outside world to believe, but this sounds pretty bad. The NYT article wisely doesn't try to point to an underlying cause, anyone? Is it e.g. a worsening of socio-economic factors or is there more to it?

This isn't exclusive to the U.S. of course, but there's the pernicious view that they're "bad people", they make bad choices etc.

To this view I would reply with the idea, attributed to Socrates, that there is no such thing as "moral weakness", or that doing good and bad amounts to knowledge of what is good or bad or a lack of it (keeping in mind knowledge could be more than merely mental abstractions).

Now unless this idea can be disproven, how can "moral weakness" be used as a justification to ignore the plight of these people?

There's definitely more to it. This problem will continue regardless of the number of jobs available.

“ ... as long as American life was something to be escaped from, the cartel would always be assured a bottomless pool of new customers.” -Pynchon

Kids want to get high and they’re cheap?