Ditto with me. Why blame the drug cartels when American recreational users create the huge demand for drugs.
Recreational drug use is a problem, but not the only cause - or even the main cause - of widespread drug addiction.
There is a legal drug epidemic which leads to addiction to illegal drugs - people get hooked on prescribed pain killers and anti depressants, and then when their prescription expires, they seek illegal substitutes.
Also, there is a long history of Big Pharma marketing supposedly non-addictive drugs to cure addiction. Cocaine was developed to end Opium addiction. Heroine was developed by Beyer to end Cocaine addiction. Etc..
So, while it is true that recreational drug use is a risky and unhealthy cultural phenomenon, we must not lose sight of the fact that there are huge multinational corporations profiting and preying on an innocent population.
Most of the serious drug addicts I know of did not begin as recreational drug users - they began with prescribed pain-killers or therapies. Some were gulf war vets who were badly injured or suffered PTSD. Some had motorcycle accidents and got addicted to pain- killers.
When I was in high school and college in the 1970s, I and most of my friends smoked weed and tried plenty of other recreational stuff. At some point early on, we all came to realize it wasn’t helping our grades, it was not helping us climb the social ladder, it was not helping us get the girl.
So we quit doing it so much, then quit altogether. One or two of my friends kept smoking weed into adulthood, and although I wouldn’t say it was a healthy choice - they did not progress into other drugs or become ‘addicts’ - certainly not the kind of addict at risk of overdosing.
Avoiding addiction is ultimately our own responsibility. But there is something wrong with our culture when so much money can be made legally by healthcare institutions pushing deadly poisons on innocent people.