I sometimes suspect that some people (not just Americans) are so concerned about what others are doing with their own bodies because it’s easier to point fingers at others than to look at how they could better themselves, especially when you’re talking about something that isn’t hurting anyone else (i.e. gay marriage or tattoos).
As for the drug use or obesity issues, I don’t believe that regulating the behavior legally is going to solve the problem. Both potentially burden our social systems, but penalizing the behavior isn’t addressing the cause of the behavior.
I truly believe that treating addiction as a medical and psychosocial issue (which it is by the time someone becomes a junkie) would be much more useful in the long run than just throwing someone in jail for a bit and tossing them back into the same environment afterwards. Once the physical addiction is dealt with, the social/emotional issues that encouraged someone to turn to drugs have to be looked at, as well. It’s fine and dandy to say “don’t use drugs” but then completely ignore the abuse, poverty and other issues that made drug use such an appealing alternative in the first place. If those issues aren’t addressed, you’ll constantly have people self-medicating with illicit drugs and committing crimes, winding up in the ER or otherwise burdening the system. I agree that selling the stuff is a legal issue, but using it is a medical issue.
I also believe that our medical system would not be nearly so burdened if we focussed more on preventative care rather than just waiting for bodies to break down before we address the issue. Obesity falls into this category. Our society pushes pills to cover symptoms rather than fix the problem. Then you need more pills to address problems caused by the other pills you’re taking. People ask their doctors for prescriptions they don’t need, just because a commercial convinced them they need them. Miracle diet plans are foisted on us when it would have been much more expedient to coach people who were developing bad habits before they got so badly out of shape that other medical issues start coming to the fore as a result. Realistically, it is not fair to tell someone who is obese to just stop eating and get their butts off the couch. Obesity is a much more complex issue than that.
Perhaps what I’m getting at is that our problems are complex and that it’s much easier to oversimplify someone else’s issues and tell them what you think they’re doing wrong than it is to really look at the heart of the problems we have, to work with each other and try to develop realistic solutions. To do that, we’d have to truly get to know each other, which might mean recognizing some of our own weaknesses in others who have fallen along the way.