Criminalizing “addiction” and altered mental states amounts to enacting religious dogma into law, which is or should be against the 1st Amendment prohibition of establishing a religion. So are laws against prostitution and gambling.
The Temperance Movement on the Right and Progressives on the Left join forces in the earliest 1900s to form a consensus for big government enabling each other to advance their respective agendas, even though they contradict each other on some points. It is a marriage of convenience.
It is where you get “big government conservatives. A lot of “small government conservatives don’t realize that small government is not capable of nor inclined to enforcing their social agenda.
I am a conservatarian. That is basically a security/economic conservative who is also anti-abortion but libertarian/liberal on all other major social issue.
“The Temperance Movement on the Right and Progressives on the Left join forces in the earliest 1900s to form a consensus for big government”
For its first decades the Temperance Movement was all about awareness and social pressure - which is when it enjoyed its greatest success.
But today’s ‘social conservatives’ don’t have the guts to exert social pressure so pass the buck to big government.