This is false history. You are just repeating the ignorant propaganda of the Pro-Drug advocates.
Drugs did not become a problem until the Civil war made them heavily imported and widely distributed in this nation. Prior to the Civil war, most people were unfamiliar with cocanoids and Opioids. Those that knew of them regarded them as medicines, which is indeed how they became widely disseminated after the civil war. They were used as pain killers for soldiers (on both sides) who were wounded in battle.
Following the civil war, drugs started getting much more usage in the form of patent medicines and elixirs which were being disseminated by a lot of unscrupulous people who only wanted to make a fast buck. Most of these contained cocaine or some form of opium, and they were highly addictive. (and were causing many deaths)
Various Doctors (in the 1890s) working for the US Government began to notice that a lot of these "medicines" were bad for people, and they began to wonder what was in them. After the pure food and drug act was passed in 1906, they realized most of them contained serious narcotics, and so efforts were made to ban them.
Shortly thereafter, they produced the Harrison Narcotics act which forbid the usage of these dangerous drugs, and if you don't think this was necessary, I will point out that Coca Cola was effectively Cocaine Cola. Every bottle contained several hundred milligrams of cocaine in it.
Do you really think society could have coped with cocaine infused soda pop? Do you really think that would never have caused any problems?