Why do drugs make people die?

People who take hard drugs like speed (amphetamines or methamphetamines), cocaine, opiates (like heroin, morphine, oxycodone) or benzodiazepines (Valium or Xanax) can overdose on these drugs fairly easily. Basically, overdosing is when you accidentally take too much of a drug at once. Overdosing is often fatal, especially when you inject drugs (as opposed to smoking or snorting them).

Other times, people get killed by drugs indirectly (meaning, they get killed by the low-life people you meet when you're a drug addict). Not everyone who uses drugs, even hard drugs, gets addicted to them. But hard drugs (cocaine, opiates, speed) are chemically addictive (they make your brain crave more of them), so it is difficult to do them without becoming addicted to them. And opiates are physically addictive as well as chemically addictive (meaning, there are physical withdrawal symptoms for daily users...they get sick without heroin/morphine/whatever).

If you're a drug addict, you spend a lot of time around other drug addicts and drug dealers, most of whom are not honest, caring people, and could either kill you, or help get you into bad situations in which you could be killed. You might also do things like prostitute yourself for drug money, which puts you at risk of getting diseases and getting raped, robbed, and/or murdered. You could end up homeless, because you can't pay your rent, because you're spending so much money on drugs. Homeless people are at a far greater risk of becoming diseased/raped/robbed/murdered.