You make it sound like there's a problem with the people getting addicted, not the systemic overprescription of addictive drugs to unwitting patients who followed the authority of naive, at best, or even malicious medical professionals.
Ever been to a doctor's office, get prescribed a certain medicine, and then look around the office and see 5 different knick-knacks from the Pharmaco (i.e. Calendars, Notepads, general adverts) in the room as they're writing the script?
The issue is far far larger than Opioids. I think a bigger message should be sent on this issue. We are one of the only first world countries that even allows advertisement of Medications, and have repeatedly seen the impacts of these companies' marketing tactics.
The failure is on all of us for creating a society in which being addicted to opiates will ruin your life. There's no reason this has to be the case.
I certainly could not, I am not so heartless, and I certainly hope the same of my own doctors.
I think we forgot that by and large near all these people were in genuine pain. It’s easy to disparage them from the sidelines, but walk a mile in their shoes.
What I am not interested in is my friend getting 100 Vicodin for a bit of pain after some dental visit (maybe wisdom teeth removed? can't remember), that he later realized was way more than he needed and had him temporarily addicted.