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Profits.

Several drug manufacturers flooded the market with pills exposing way too many people to opioids in a casual way. Once folks are addicted it’s very very difficult to break the addiction.

The Washington post has an excellent series on the topic if you are interested.

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From what I have read OxyContin was sold as needing only two doses a day. At that level it’s not that addictive. But it soon turned out that two times a day is not enough so people took more to avoid crashing in between. With that amount it became very addictive but companies still kept selling the two doses a day although they knew that people would quickly take more.

The whole point of OxyCotin was that it was a long acting dose. So if they admitted it didn't last that long it would cause loss of business. This cause a lot of patients to be undertreated and seek alternatives.

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