I think the phrase 'poor of spirit,' has a place here.    Poverty creates emotional and physical stress.   The short term 'escape' through alcohol or drugs is a bad decision, but understandable when poverty creates desperation fear, hunger and separation from one's own neighborhood/community.

It isn't that poor people can't find their way out of poverty, they can and they do every single day.    But far more never leave their circumstances and lose hope for long term security.   If life is going to stink for the next 40 years, why not turn to short term highs, so you at least get moments of stress relief from what seems a very harsh world.  Death is not the enemy, it's the subconscious way 'out' of a painful life.

Choosing to ignore the circumstance of poverty, or to not acknowledge the clear lack of comparable opportunity between the rich and the poor, would be an irrational choice.

The nation is not clear on how to help, or even if they should care about the poor.