The essential problem we are dealing with concerning this issue is that of truth. Truth is the word that is used to contrast the equally elusive concept of illusion. Truth scientifically means that one sees the reality as it is. It is a basic human value on which the whole of human society and virtue is founded. The act of escaping from the truth is called escapism.
Escapism is the willful creation and maintenance of lies that is liable to legal persecution.
Of course everything was settled by economic penalties. One cannot send people to prison who have been tolerated as respected tax-payers and citizens, although they are lying frauds demolishing the society with their policies of deceit. Although they are guilty of killing hundreds of thousands of people giving them cancer and driving them into despair, unemployment, divorce, madness and suicide, they are tolerated and only penalized. Not the producer of the soft-drug is factually responsible, the user is. One glass of alcohol e.g. is even considered healthy.