If you go back and look at stories about mental hospitals back in the mid 1800s and even early 1900s, you see some truly horrific things that people did to treat them, and you see some very awful ways people were treated - as well as how they were expected to deal with their conditions.
How is this relevant?
Just like each of these generations was fairly blind to what we now see as almost barbaric treatment - I think that future generations are going to look back at how we treated and dealt with addiction and addicts, and almost look at us in the same light as those crazy people that bolted mentally ill people to chairs.
I could be wrong, but there are some horrible paths that some of these kids have to tread to get where they are, and there are bad habits of self medication that turn into something worse. But I don't think people give up million dollar lives to toss everything away "because they make bad choices". I think like all addictions, some people get chewed up by them.
I understand team owners want/need their players to be clean in order to perform. And I understand that massive amount of money and enabling probably doesn't help. But there is probably a middle ground where at least some of these kids can avoid having to throw everything away.
Either way, it sucks and I feel for all involved.