[HiTech RedNeck]

You throw a lot of unnecessary and dysfunctional-leading stuff into the mix and tell me to accept it as a basket deal.

No deal.

We need to ask squarely: why wasn’t this a scandal in America in 1900. Not that the problem wasn’t a problem elsewhere by then (cf. the China opium wars).

[Rockingham]

Alcoholism was a common problem in the US throughout the 19th century, with the opium extract laudanum also much abused. These ills prompted the temperance and prohibition movements and increasing legal restrictions on opioids and cocaine.

Wide scale substance abuse causes immense harm to innocent victims. Moreover, victimization and social calamities and breakdowns in general often bring a turning away from religious faith, as happened after the Black Death, the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, the US Civil War, and World War One. The mystery of evil takes an acute form in such instances, making it hard to escape the question of why a good deity would permit such harms.