It would be a second or third order effect. It stands to reason that someone who is a part of a strong religious community would have a much better social life, support structure, and network. All of these things reduce the likelihood of getting addicted to hard drugs. You could also take it a step further and say that having such things makes breaking an addiction/rehab more likely to be successful, too.
> It stands to reason that someone who is a part of a strong religious community would have a much better social life, support structure, and network.
Remove "religious" from this sentence and it is still true. Now the question remains whether a religious community is better than other communities. I doubt it, because religion usually comes with a lot of extra baggage and can become outright dangerous.
Drug use and abuse levels do differ between religious and irreligious folk, but one explanation for that might be regional availability rather than religion.
Indeed, and to make it even more of a mess, regional issues also correlated with economic issues. My unorthodox opinion is that the opioid crisis started with an actual pain crisis due to the kinds of jobs that people were working, coupled with a lack of strong labor law enforcement and safety net. People were turning to pills because they were in pain.
It seems like religious people would be far less likely to seek professional help for abuse and that would skew these numbers greatly, considering the methodology.
Religious community members have far more reason to avoid acknowledging their drug problem in a way that might make that information public.
Surely that is circular - if religion did cause less drug addiction (and/or dealing) then you'd expect less distribution and thus availability in religious areas because there's less demand.
