I was waiting for the fearmongering over opiates. It really doesn't help pain patients to not understand the full story of what happened with the prescribing at the time. Most opiates are actually dirt cheap (not a lot of money to make off the pills) and that's not where the entire source of the issue came from.
You need to be aware that them doing a 180° on opiates sprung up entirely new ways to profit, which is why it's now bordering on cruelty. In NYS, when you'd call about expensive med marijuana, they were outright calling it "the opiate replacement program". 🙄 Don't think certain restrictions weren't incentivized by profits (new addiction meds, rehabs, etc.)
The "epidemic" is no epidemic at this time. Go ahead and try to find legitimate pills. They cut off or reduced patients by 70% and that was AFTER measures in place that got it under control. Drug testing, random pill counting, having to be out before you fill again, computer tracking, etc. Nipped it right in the bud.
And it wasn't all about the drugs making all the profits, since many were old and had no patent. It was crap like Flordia, where quacks were setting up clinics to make money off the numerous visits. There were other problems, like overprescribing, keeping bad patients, or using unnecessarily, but it's well established that when correctly used/ prescribed, less than 2% become drug addicts. A lot of the deaths at the peak were deceptive as well, with multiple drugs being abused at the same time. Suicides were ruled as overdosing. Drinking (that was never advised) was involved. People jumping to heroin, when pills weren't enough.
There was a lot of people decieving doctors, stealing pills from grandma, drug dealers, and shit like pill mills. It's swung so far the other way, that people getting limbs amputated, or dying of cancer, have to beg for a piddly script of hydrocodone (which is loaded with tylenol). Like always, sweeping movements let people fall through the cracks.