If you ever want a clear demonstration of how drugs can ruin a person's life, this film is it. The main protagonists of this film are working class white drug addicts living in rural New York state, not stereotype people of color living in urban slums. As a result, the middle-class white viewer can't say to herself: it's not an issue that affects my kind of people.
Since I believe that the criminalization of drug abuse is a policy disaster, making the problem much worse that it would be if cocaine and narcotics were legal, but controlled somehow (I don't pretend to have a clear idea of the correct policy), this movie was a challenge to me. However, without making an issue of it, the movie also shows that some people can indulge in occasional, casual drug use without becoming dependent (at least in the case of cocaine, marijuana, and alcohol), while others become addicted. So I would say that addiction is the problem, not drugs per se.
I still believe that if the money that is currently spent on enforcement, plus the money that would be generated in tax revenue if selling drugs were legal, were spent on rehabilitation of the minority of drug users who become addicts, drugs would do less harm to society than they do today. But I know that drugs are far from benign.
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