People switching from prescription opiates to heroin are a percentage of the users but they do not completely explain the present epidemic. It’s a complex situation with plenty of fault to go around. Doctors aren’t prescribing crystal meth. They aren’t prescribing ecstasy. They aren’t prescribing cocaine. They aren’t behind the legal weed movement. We are a nation of drug addicts. We create an enormous demand for all drugs and there are organizations ready and able to profit from our nation-wide substance abuse problem.
West Virginia has been a portal. They are having problems with funding burials.
“Drugs are killing so many people in West Virginia that the state can’t keep up with the funerals” 2017
A Charleston Gazette-Mail investigation last year found that between 2007 and 2012, as the state’s drug overdose epidemic skyrocketed, drug wholesalers shipped over 780 million doses of opiate painkillers hydrocodone and oxycodone to the state, or roughly “433 pain pills for every man, woman and child in West Virginia.” Those two drugs killed more than 1,700 West Virginians during that time period, the investigation found.
I seriously doubt that many (if any) old grandpas are out there looking for heroin because they can't get pain meds to deal with their chronic pains.
Banning pain medications for "normal" people isn't going to do squat about the demand for getting high by gangbangers, teenagers, and assorted other types of addicts.