When we deal with WHY people will do anything to ALTER THEIR MIND, even if it kills them, we can then begin to solve the drug and alcohol addiction.
Until then, it's just a game for the ruling elite to make money.
Well-now we know the why, on the general level at least: man is helplessly and hopelessly broken. (Fortunately there is a God, and He can fix that and be hope for the hopeless and and help for the helpless.) But that answer is not intuitively translated into "real-life" actions, is it?
Sending men with guns to beat down those distributing it is not the answer.
Depriving people of their dignity is not the answer.
Screaming and whining about the evils of alcohol is not the answer.
The real answer, for many of their particular WHY, is absurdly simple: love them. Why do you think people seek to escape reality? Because in reality they feel alone, unvalued, unloved, and/or injustice.
Indeed, I predict there will be a strong rise in alcoholism (and perhaps other drugs) as government becomes more and more intrusive; nothing says "you don't matter" like a government organization, nothing says "you have no value" like the faceless bureaucracy that makes you jump through hoops at their whim, and nothing perpetrates injustice like a group that deems itself above all reckoning.