This is thoughtful piece with a terrible headline.
"For decades, governments have responded to everything from obesity to drug abuse to fake news by treating public awareness and understanding as an all-purpose silver bullet. Sometimes, this works. The introduction of high-quality relationship and sex education helped reduce teenage pregnancy in England by 55 per cent between 1998 and 2015. Fifty years of drink-driving campaigns cut deaths by 90 per cent. But these sustained, cross-political successes are rare. More frequently, the effort increases the burden on teachers and students, without producing noticeable results. Few examples illustrate this better than saving for retirement."
I guess governments default to education in the same way most organisations default to marketing/persuasion.