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Because normal people are using the term as a short-hand.

It doesn’t seem especially useful to lump everyone from coffee drinkers to people using antibiotics to people shooting up fentanyl all together, so I don’t really see the point in insisting on such a literal use of the the term.

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They don't use it as short-hand, very truthfully if you ask them if they are drug users, they'll say no, and when we say drug user, we understand that we don't mean antibiotics but an addictive drug of some kind.

It's important to insist so people really understand that the damage is as bad as "drugs" (even worse in many cases) and that would allow to start having wine and spirit bottles and so-on at least have to deadly labels like cigarettes, which might make people slow down their consumption.

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