I agree that we have a choice, but I think you give too much credit to free will.
It's not necessarily free will, but responsibility and liability. Everything a person does after reaching the age of majority is his personal responsibility and.or liability unless done under duress. The hardship involved in the decision is not relevant. Drug use isn't a "choice of evils" type matter.
We are basically indoctrinated into a culture of at least trying these things once, when we are young and naive. We have a choice, but the odds are against us.
Our culture is consumerism.
I was never addicted to opioids. Alcohol was the one that I had to beat. I still use nicotine, albeit in a safer way now.
And it was your choice to purchase or cease purchase of any of those items.
It's a culture problem.
Disagree. It's an issue at an individual level. It's simply a serious of poor decisions made by a person. People make poor decisions frequently, example: begin pattern of never doing school work. Snowballs into poor grades, not graduating high school, and criminal activity for income as employers don't want to hire you. Begin pattern of abusing pain killers. Snowballs into injecting heroin, unemployment as employers want a clean drug test, and criminal activity to gain income to pay for drugs.
These companies shouldn't take advantage of people who are addicted, because we were programmed to be addicted.
They're not taking advantage of the addicts as the addicts aren't paying for the product. They have no income to pay for the product. The taxpayer and the addicts loved ones are paying for the product. The taxpayer and the addict's loved ones are choosing the addict over $4,000.
Paying that for a family member's string of poor decisions isn't an option in my household and that is known prior to that person even considering use for the first time. If possession of use of illegal drugs is found you no longer have a place to live beginning that second. I'm not putting my and the rest of my family's lives in legal jeopardy because a family member chose drug use. It's a serious issue with Title 2 NFA items in a household. I'm not taking jail time at 10yrs + $250,000 fine per just because a family member decides to get stoned.
I commend you for not falling into the trap of addiction. Seriously.
It was never an option. I grew up in Appalachia, where there is drug use at seemingly every turn. From my experience the addicts don't come from a doctors improperly or over prescribing. It comes from a willful choice to misuse prescribed narcotics, choice to purchase prescription narcotics without a prescription to use in a manner not as directed, or the individual was already a drug user of some kind and wanted to try it out. I'd go as far to say that over 90% of the people I have grown up with have used some federally illegal drug or misused a legal narcotic at some point.
I see many, many addicts in my law practice, on both the family side and criminal side. Each and every one of them can stop use. They simply do not want to go through the hardship of quitting, and even for their own children. Prison will get a person clean, then as soon as they are out they go and start using again. It's a choice.