That's rather condescending and ignorant. It has nothing to do with puritanical urges, it has to do with personal responsibility and everyone being responsible for their own actions, which results in having to suffer the personal consequences without having the right to impose oneself on others by one's own choices in life.

Unfortunately, this whole drug situation in the USA has gotten, like many things, totally out of hand through gaslighting abusive actions by those who claim to want to "help" and make things better, but instead have nothing but a record and history of making things worse, which they immediately sweep under the rug the second even they can't ignore their constant, repeated, and typical failures.

What this "caring" approach smells of to me is a kind of stasis, where the helper-syndrome types get to feel good about themselves, while getting rich as org directors, and also normalizing drug cartel operations. The Drug cartels and organized drug criminals are actually a real domestic terror and civil threat to society and communities as they kill and destroy lives by the hundreds of thousands and devastate lives by the millions every single year.

I do agree that throwing users in prison is nonsense, even though often ( and I know people who can attest to this ) it is the thing that saves them from the drug and it also leads to users giving up people on the chain towards the sources of the chemical warfare that is waged on the American people.

I also agree, this whole cottage industry of drug related careers and fortunes, whether it's NGOs or DEA, is an utter mess and corrupted. What really should be happening is that all drug producers, smugglers, transporters, and dealers be declared the perpetrators of crimes against humanity that they are and they should be treated like the enemies in war that they are, as they engage in chemical warfare that kills 80,000 people every year and destroys millions of lives and families and pillages billions and trillions of dollars.

It should be a scorched earth tactic against smugglers, dealers, and producers ... a merciless, ruthless, hunt for these people that are then erased as the war criminals and pestilence on humanity they are ... the mass murderers they are.

But that's from someone that actually hates the misery and suffering and death that drugs cause. I do not get the sense that most people actually care one iota about the 80,000 people that die every year, not to count the thousands who commit suicide due to addiction. All those who do not want to end it once and for all with direct, hard, and merciless action are complicit in and guilty of supporting the murders by the drug cartels and criminals against humanity.