It really shows how morally bankrupt our medical system is. How many people died while medical professionals took kickbacks and golf trips and steak dinners while rampantly overprescribing this stuff?
There was rampant defrauding of medicaid, huge surges of overdose deaths.
I broke (in seven places) my collarbone about 7 years ago and the number of different people (ambulance EMT, first nurse, doctor, radiologist) who kept offering me painkillers was frankly bizarre. Yes I was in pain, but I was fine with OTC acetominophen and ibuprofen, certainly not in pain to risk a lifelong addiction.
They of course sent me home from surgery with a bottle of the stuff, and I didn't need it. But the weird thing was that I was given some in postsurgery, and there was a bizarre faint desire to use them, such that I felt compelled to get rid of them and not have them in my residence.
The attitude of doctors saying "we didn't know they were addictive" is absolutely outrageous. There were 100,000+ people dying per year of opioids, and who knows if the stats are undercounts. A million Americans may have died from opioid overpresciption. Perhaps opioid deaths replaced heroin deaths. Perhaps heroin deaths were exacerbated by opioid overprescription.
Nevertheless, the medical establishment adopted the same "gee whiz I had no idea that was happening" as the CEO of Purdue Pharma. Except the medical establishment is full of ... medical experts.
It really shows how bankrupt our for-profit medical system is, how you can't take any advice from a doctor without considering how they are being manipulated by drug/device company incentives or insurance company limitations, how their medical opinion is fundamentally compromised.
There is no longer trust.