>The economic advantage of government involvement is clear.
Does this also include the prison-industrial complex?
Drugs? They’re widely despised of and I don’t think I have ever _seen_ a person who did drugs in my entire life. I’m middle class btw. Note that less religious cities have higher numbers of alcohol and drug consumption, like Izmir or Mersin.
It’s honestly sad to see entire societies of 330M people devastated by such simple substances and unable to defeat them. Alhamdulillah for Islam.
> “Islam and Islamic culture have successfully maintained virtually alcohol-free societies for centuries and this was done without a kind of stiff-armed, crackdown prohibition as was attempted in US history, which itself arguably caused more harm than good.”
The drug is the problem, and so are the suppliers -- they are killing people. Addicts and people who need psychiatric care are harming themselves. If the criminal suppliers were supplying contraband woolen socks instead, there might only be a trade dispute and a loss of retail tax income.
That said, users of harmful drugs fall into two sacrifice zones: SZ1) the purveyors of the harmful drugs don't care much if you die, and SZ2) the rest of society doesn't care if you die, but doesn't want you dying in a business district.
Government is willing to be in some "dealing" businesses, such as tobacco and alcohol, because by far most users of these substances can keep working and paying taxes. The economic advantage of government involvement is clear.
There is only so much that the levels of government will invest to reduce (palliate) the suffering of users of harmful drugs. Local government is directly motivated to not have its community (revenue base) supplanted by drug zones. Citizens don't want that either. So the minimal mitigation is what you would expect.
When we say something is a social problem, we often mean that we wish humans were kinder to humans.