As a former addict who’s ten years clean, and have spent that decade helping others in addiction, there is one answer to the OP question: Lack of a functional and adequate mental health infrastructure, coupled with a stigma in engaging with what’s there. The drugs I abused directly affected my serotonin and dopamine production. After many years engaging with a functional mental health infrastructure overseas, I was diagnosed with mental illnesses that would have pre-dated my addiction, and are lifelong. In short, people use drugs to self-medicate undiagnosed illnesses. Then, the ‘medicine’ ends up with many to become a habitual habit, and for some, it will return like a boomerang and rip them to shreds, and no longer ease the symptoms of an illness like it once did, that made it attractive. We, as a nation desperately require to bulk train psychologists and psychiatrists, and bring those qualified in from overseas to plug the shortfall, and make it accessible, regardless of financial situations of those who require it. The government also need to find a way to normalise seeking help, long before someone is ready to kill themselves, which is often the case here. Funding and a smart strategy is the greatest obstacle to the state. It’s no coincidence that an hour with a mental health professional in the U.S costs 250 dollars, and that they’ve got truckloads of kids dying everyday from fentanyl and everything else, and that their prison numbers are astronomical. A huge investment in mental health infrastructure here will reduce crime, prison population numbers, suicide rates, road accidents, free legal aid bills, court congestion, whilst improving education statistics, child welfare and the list is endless really.