I grew up near the heroin junkie city of The Netherlands (Heerlen) which also attracted a lot of junkies from the Aachen area. I got a fear of needles likely influenced by the needles on the streets. Thanks also to everyone mentioning which cities contain needles on the ground, I forgot about it being a possible thing (I would not visit such a city, and I live/work near Amsterdam, go figure). Getting my COVID-19 shots was a serious hurdle because of my fear of needles. It also likely influenced my disgust of prostitution (a lot of the female heroin junkies turned to prostitution). Most of these people were homeless, too.

They (local gov) tried a lot of things to fix the problem. Play classical music at the gathering area (the train/bus station). Free methadone. Free needles. Free heroin I don't believe was tried. Give the homeless a task like selling a newspaper called 'street journal', watching everyone pass by looking down on the seller. Cynical me would say these people passed away. I met one of them at a work reintegration company, and I recognized him right away. He had HIV. Though this was in ~2006. I let him listen to one of my favourite music at that time, and I remember he enjoyed it.

I learned of the popular drugs in first of high school (age 12), as part of education (alcohol, cannabis, XTC, heroin/cocaine). In my late young adulthood I ended up trying quite some drugs. Mostly psychedelics, never heroin (or cocaine), and amphetamine only once (from which I know how it feels to be an asshole). They are far too addicting, and destroy lives. I've been addicted to nicotine/cigarettes though, but so has 25+% (?) of society. It was tough getting rid of that habit (I am probably still 'addicted to it' just not practicing).

Lots of good movies (and books) were made about heroin addiction. Wir Kinder Von Bahnhof Zoo. Requiem For A Dream. Trainspotting. Just to name a few. The social setting a (young) person is in is going to have a huge influence. Sure, its also a matter of morals and values and parenthood, but how can I affect which friends my children are going to have in school?

When faced with the prospect of losing a child to heroin based on his friend crowd, you can take action. My family moved to a different states to do a friend-group reset for one of my uncles. Kids are worth fighting for. Do whatever you have to.

Same in the UK, from Brighton and there has been heroine here on and off, certainly a used to see needles in the 80s.

In Toronto you're 10 meters from a needle at all times! (Fake number, but they're everywhere)

Used needles are still a common sight in Melbourne.

I grew up in a rural town in NSW and we kids had hardly ever heard of hard drugs let alone ever having been offered any. At best, all we knew of them was that it was an overseas problem and that there were strange opium dens up in Asia somewhere.

We were never warned about drugs in primary and secondary school as there weren't any - with the exception of cigarettes, which some kids tried down behind the school toilet block but that was more a defiance of authority than a real problem. Drugs were never the topic of conversation amongst us at school.

The first time I came across discarded needles and syringes was quite some years later when I was walking around the Colosseum in Rome. It was a bit of a shock to see them in such a renowned place.

I am forever grateful that we kids grew up in such innocence of drugs (that wasn't true of other dangers however).

The sad thing is that that’s probably no longer the case, it sounds like ice/meth is a big problem in rural Australia.

Tragically, that's ever so true, rural country towns both in the US and Australia are now in the vanguard of the drug epidemic. It's not only ice/meth but also opioids thanks in part to the Sacklers.

Fortunately, my family seems to have escaped the illicit drug problem and I no longer live in a rural area, nevertheless sometimes I wish I had Dr Who's tardis to escape back to a much simpler time - at least for a short respite anyway. :-)

Ditto in Spain.