You can't just look at absolute deaths. You need to compare the chance that a hard drug user dies of a drug-related cause with the chance that an alcohol user dies of an alcohol-related cause. The number of people who drink alcohol is orders of magnitude higher than the number of people who do drugs, but the number of alcohol deaths is not orders of magnitude higher than the number of drug deaths.
What's with the value judgement? It is known to be very addictive -- why is that? Because it is so "good", the experience is pleasant. That why people take it!
To me being an addict is not a problem. I see coffee/nicotin/alc/TV/porn addicts every day and call them my friends'n'fam. No problem. It's "their choice", and they dont look bad for it in my view.
In some cases addiction comes together with other behavior that do make people look bad to me: not taking responsibility, being a cunt, etc. Those behaviors I do look bad at.