Addiction is a health issue. Experimenting prior to addiction is clearly not.
Medical problems associated with drugs go way beyond just addiction. Kids can die on their first use of a drug, even on a dose that would normally be forced be harmless, due to other factors such as dehydration, alcohol consumption or overheating. Even without becoming addicted, drugs can have other harmful medical effects. The sheer scale of the simpleminded ignorance of this comment is staggering.
It is why kids think "that cannot happen to me". Because its criminal. Because its the plight of the "other". Because its told like a monster in a fable rather than a fact of life and an emergent property of our society and biology.
Saying that does not imply that they endorse criminalization.