> You can reduce alcoholism and drug use by giving people interesting and useful things to do.

My personal experience makes me doubt this is the case. To give an example, my grandpa was an alcoholic and had a family of 7 and was the lead accountant at a major pharma company. Did he lack things to do?

I think the main cause of drug use is availability of drugs. That's one reason why doctors tend to be addicts more than the general population. My anecdotal experience is that the people that used drugs were not people that lacked "interesting and useful things to do", they were rich (and accomplished) kids with money to blow and drugs were always just a phone call away.

I'm not against people living motivated and interesting lives, but I just think you are vastly oversimplifying a major public health problem.