Sugar is present in the milk mothers nurse their babies with, so I can't necessarily say it's evil or a drug. That would make all female mammals who reproduce drug pushers.

I also think sugar and the craving for sweets is a product of evolution.

For billions of years, fruit, the non-processed, "natural" form of sugar ripens right before the starvation season (winter in temperate climates, the dry season in the tropics).

The hunter-gatherers who had a taste for sweets gorged themselves on the ripe fruit, and put a lot of fat on their bodies. Those who could store enough food in the form of body fat were the ones most likely to survive the starvation season and pass those sweet loving genes on to the next generation. Those who didn't care for sweets perished.

The problem is after the innovation of agriculture and the ever increasing ways to store and redistribute food, most humans have defeated the starvation season. That's a good thing. But we still have that genetic sweet loving instinct that was instilled in us by evolution.

So without meager foraging in the starvation season we get fat.

Do I consider the craving for sweets a drug? Not strictly but perhaps in the broad sense of the word.

Do I consider the access to sugar 365 days a year with no starvation season to counter the effects of that sugar harmful? You betcha!

The fact that corporate agriculture and food processing/distribution both dominate the advertising stream and have infiltrated the very agencies that were formed to protect our health like the FDA, AHA, and so on has done nothing but make profits for those companies at the expense of shortening the lives of those consuming their products. In a way it's mass murder for profit.

That sweet and high glycemic starchy stuff looks great and tastes great but you have to remember, that stuff will kill you. Slowly but when you are on your death bed dying before you are ready to go, you can't undo those sweet treats.

Bob