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Maybe you’ve never injected yourself, nor have you hidden in a corner to smoke something illegal. But perhaps you can’t start your day without coffee. Perhaps you have a drink to calm your anxiety, take an anxiolytic to sleep, or a pill to keep you standing even when your body says “enough.”

We aren’t just talking about substances sold in back alleys. We are also talking about those bought with a prescription, those given away at parties, those drunk at business dinners or family gatherings.

When drugs are discussed, they are usually condemned from the pulpit with labels like “deviant” or “addict,” or the consumer is idealized as some kind of enlightened transgressor. Both narratives are wrong.

This is not just a personal choice; it is a system that creates the conditions for these substances to be needed, to circulate, and to be either punished or applauded, depending on who consumes them.

No one is entirely outside of it.
We all consume something.

Some do it to perform better, others to forget, others because they don’t know how to carry the weight of the day without external help. Some do it alone, others among friends, and many in silence.

The image we have of the “addict” has served to keep us comfortable, as if the problem were “out there,” in other bodies, in other lives. But drug consumption is not an individual deviation; it is a mirror of the world we have built.

A History of Power

The history of every substance has a history of power inscribed upon it. Opium did not become a problem when the Chinese smoked it in their traditional ceremonies; it became one when the British Empire decided to use it to break the economy of the Qing Dynasty. The Opium Wars were not wars against drugs, but wars for the imperial right to drug entire populations for commercial gain.

Coca was not born as cocaine, either. For millennia, the Quechua and Aymara peoples chewed coca leaves to endure high altitudes, the cold, and grueling workdays. It was traditional medicine, a ritual element. Its transformation into cocaine came with the arrival of German chemists in the late 19th century, who applied industrial processes to ancestral knowledge to create a product that could be sold on the streets of Paris and New York.

Tobacco followed a similar path: from a sacred plant used by Indigenous Americans in ceremonies to communicate with ancestors, it became a plantation commodity cultivated by enslaved labor, eventually turning into the mass-market product that killed more than 100 million people in the 20th century.

Every substance we consider a “drug” today carries a history of dispossession, extraction, and colonial transformation.

Same Drug, Different Destiny

In Portland, Oregon, fentanyl has turned entire sectors of the city into urban refugee camps. People sleep on sidewalks surrounded by syringes and waste, while businesses close and social services collapse. The official response vacillates between paternalistic compassion and repressive sweeps, but it never addresses the causes: the housing crisis, job insecurity, and the collapse of mental health systems.

In Appalachia, entire communities have been devastated by the opioid crisis. Here, the narrative is different: the talk is of “working families” who are victims of “unscrupulous pharmaceutical corporations.” The same politicians who promote a “tough on crime” stance against crack in urban Black neighborhoods speak of “treatment and compassion” when it comes to opioids in rural white communities.

In the Latino neighborhoods of Los Angeles or the African-American ghettos of Detroit, the same substance is treated as a criminal threat that justifies militarized patrols, mass arrests, and disproportionate sentences. The U.S. prison system—the largest in the world—is fueled primarily by drug-related offenses committed by Black and Latino people.

The cocaine consumed in Wall Street bathrooms is chemically identical to the cocaine sold on Bronx street corners. The difference is that one funds corporate bonuses, while the other justifies urban warfare.

In Germany, nitrous oxide is sold freely in supermarkets. Young people inhale it in parks and at festivals without much police scandal. Its recreational use is tolerated because it stems from the white middle class and does not threaten any established order. If the same substance were consumed by Turkish immigrants or Syrian refugees, the response would be radically different.

Latin America

Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia are living a war they did not choose. Their territories have been turned into the battlegrounds of a chemical war that benefits everyone but them. Farmers grow coca because it is the only thing that allows them to survive in rural economies devastated for decades. Young people are recruited into drug trafficking because they feel they have no other opportunities.

In Miami, New York, Madrid, and London, production is criminalized, but consumption is not. It is easier to bomb laboratories in the Colombian jungle than to arrest bankers who wash money in tax havens.

The “War on Drugs” in Latin America has left more than 300,000 dead in Mexico, displaced millions of farmers, militarized entire territories, and turned the State into a junior partner of organized crime. All of this so that drugs continue to flow with the same ease toward consuming nations.

The cocaine that reaches Europe does not drop in price, does not decrease in purity, and does not become less accessible. The war works for everyone except those who claim to be its beneficiaries.

Drug consumption in the “First World” flourishes because material progress has not brought psychological well-being; on the contrary, it has multiplied the substances that compensate for its deficiencies.

The Pharmacy of Survival

The nurse who depends on three substances to endure her shift, the programmer who resorts to microdosing psychedelics to force his creativity, the retiree who needs daily medication to cope with loneliness: none of them appear in addiction reports.

The economic system requires bodies available 24/7, minds optimized for productivity, and emotions regulated for consumption. Legal and illegal drugs simply make this impossible demand possible.

The consumption of antidepressants has tripled in the last two decades in OECD countries. The use of non-prescription stimulants has increased by 350% among U.S. college students. The use of anxiolytics among working women has grown exponentially. These are not healthcare epidemics, but chemical adaptations to inhuman living conditions.

The legal pharmaceutical market and illegal drug trafficking are two expressions of the industrial commodification of malaise. Both produce dependency, both generate extraordinary profits, and both require vulnerable populations to sustain their growth. The difference lies in the profit margins and the distribution mechanisms.

The Double Standard of Regulation

Why is alcohol—which kills 3 million people a year according to the WHO—sold on every corner, while psilocybin—which shows promising results against resistant depression—remains illegal in most countries?

Why is tobacco—which has no recognized medical benefit and is the world’s leading cause of preventable death—marketed freely, while cannabis—used medicinally for millennia—still generates controversy?

The answer is not found in pharmacology, but in politics.

Legal Substances:

• Generate profits for established corporations.

• Are consumed by sectors with political power.

• Do not threaten productive functioning.

• Stem from hegemonic cultural traditions.

Illegal Substances:

• Are associated with racialized minorities.

• Stem from non-Western traditions.

• Are used by marginalized sectors.

• Can generate experiences that question the established order.

This classification is not based on impartial scientific criteria, but on political decisions that establish who can alter their consciousness and for what purpose. It defines which mental states are acceptable within the established order and which must be repressed, medicalized, or punished.

Addiction as a Social Diagnosis

An adolescent using drugs is not an individual case of “neurological dysfunction.” They are a social symptom of a world that offers no dignified alternatives for existence to millions of young people. Their consumption does not emerge in a vacuum, but in contexts of state neglect, structural violence, the absence of opportunity, and the breakdown of the community fabric.

Problematic drug use appears in the same impoverished territories, among racialized populations, and within sectors excluded from access to education, work, and healthcare. It is not a coincidence. It is structural causality.

Drugs occupy the space that should be occupied by education, dignified work, culture, sports, and community. Criminalizing those who consume is like arresting thermometers for showing a fever.

Community as the Antidote

People consume more when they are isolated, when they lack meaningful bonds, and when they find no meaning in their daily existence. The highest rates of addiction correspond to the most individualized and fragmented societies.

This implies:

• Work that respects biological rhythms instead of demanding total availability.

• Cities designed for human connection, not just the circulation of commodities.

• Healthcare systems that address social causes, not just individual symptoms.

• Education that develops critical thinking, not just vocational skills.

• Economies that prioritize collective well-being over private accumulation.

The question is not how to eliminate drugs, but how to create living conditions that do not require constant chemical alteration of consciousness to be habitable.

What is missing is not knowledge, but the political will to challenge the interests that benefit from the status quo.