Older doctors are aware of this. But younger doctors have been taught recently at med school that opiates must only be used for acute, post-surgical pain. So an increasing number of chronic pain patients are being cut off from licit avenues, and turning to the far more dangerous street drugs.
I think the response of younger doctors in regards to cutting down prescriptions to opiates has more to do with avoiding the moral and legal entanglements with prescribing something that will long term cause chronic pain than it does an unwillingness to prescribe.
Western medicine has long been accused of being too focused on acute conditions. The pendulum is swinging in the other direction. There will continue to be doctors that find and understand balancing these risks to optimize a life, not just a body. There will also continue to be clinics that find and understand balancing malpractice insurance, not just patient throughput.
From a harm reduction perspective, taking a patient who is, say, addicted to legal oxycodone because they were overprescribed it. Now what do you do from the perspective of what's best for the patient? Is it a good thing that they're addicted to it? No... but is it more harmful to cut them off cold-turkey? Or is it better to help work with them to figure out how to get off it in a way that doesn't result in them seeking out street drugs to handle the withdrawal?
Increased suicide rates, depressions, and loneliness seems a much more likely culprit for increase addiction behavior in a nation.