What contrary experience of the USA in the 1800s? Most of the US experience with drugs occurred after the civil war left so many former soldiers addicted to opiate pain killers, and awareness of drug addiction did not start in the US until the 1880s or so.
As I've pointed out to you: "the rate of opiate addiction in America increased throughout the nineteenth century, from not more than 0.72 addicts per thousand persons before 1842 to a maximum of 4.59 per thousand in the 1890s; thereafter the rate began a sustained decline."
Dr. Bartalo in “Barber of Seville” (1818) hated Figaro because Figaro doped up the member’s of Dr. Bartalo’s household.