Tbf, most of the reasoning behind the “help” you got for smoking was because it actively endangers those around you. Alcoholism, by an extremely large margin, affects those around you much less.

There are definitely pill mills in the poorer parts of town. And usually poor populations receive Medicaid, which will typically pay for the stuff. Just anecdotal evidence as a pharm tech in a rough part of town during college, but after a while we had to actually stop taking scripts for most pain meds (still got a ton of people using trazadone and stuff, though) because the pharmacist just didn’t think it was worth his license if the scripts were tied back to a pill mill.