It's usually true, and I don't see any evidence to the contrary here. What is meaningfully different about a handful of monks taking meth relative to any other

It's usually true, and I don't see any evidence to the contrary here. What is meaningfully different about a handful of monks taking meth relative to any other group of any other ideological stripe doing something that fails to live up to their stated ideals? Something about meth in particular? That's a bad hill to stand on, considering that meth seems to have broad appeal, to say nothing of drugs in general. Getting hooked on drugs is definitely not specific to Buddhism. Something about the monastery environment? Still not very unique. Just because something happened in a group self-labelled X doesn't mean X actually had anything to do with it, any more than the latitude, weather, or any other condition around the event. Humans have a demonstrated tendency to do stupid stuff like drugs already, so you need strong evidence to say that something like Buddhism played a strong causal role on top of that. You're listening for voices in the wind. Shit happens. Ed: reading a little more about the wider problems, the relevant concept is probably the base rate fallacy. This stuff would happen with "Christians" if Christianity was the dominant religion in the area. For comparison consider all the ways, throughout history, the Catholic Church has failed to live its stated principles.