Addiction ruins lives predominantly because of the way society reacts to it.

If addicts were provided with what they need a whole slew of society driven live ruining will go away.

If you step away from all the moralising you'll realise its better to simply pay addicts off. Society won't crumble because of it, in fact a lot of the problems will go away. A minority of the at 10-15% of people with addictive personalities will find a way to get high and you can nothing about that.

Addiction is a medical problem and should be treated like it.