Honestly I don’t know how prevalent murdering for drug money is at all. My belief that this happens with some regularity for cocaine is based on suspect info now that I think about it.

The DARE program told me that definitely 100% of illegal drug users eventually turn to murder to acquire more, but that might have been an exaggeration.

i too think its more about the economics of it. Territory and business with in the criminal element is cut throat.

This. Drug industry has to settle disputes outside the law because it can't use the courts (and by proxy, threat of state violence) to deal with business disputes. So it's necessarily more violent because there aren't state level resources around to fund expensive stuff like due process. Being inherently criminal probably also ups the violence just from selection bias.

Someone rips you off in the drug industry you and your buddies go beat them up and take their stuff of value. Someone rips you off in above the table business you sue them.

There certainly would be very few, and likely none, murders to obtain cocaine by end users. It does not cause dependency in a way heroin and gabaergics do.

Heroin withdrawals are quite painful (literally), and many users are also simply suffering from endogenous depression that responds to almost nothing, and in fact used to be treated by morphine.

Same goes for alcohol and benzo withdrawals that WILL give you seizures and quite possibly death.

Psychostimulants (cocaine, amphetamines, cathionines, other assorted alkaloids, including caffeine) withdrawals means being very tired, lethargic and sleeping a lot, they are not life threatening.