“We have better ways to deal with pain these days but in the meantime, we have created a bunch of addicts....”
The addicts created themselves.
Technically but someone almost always prescribed the drugs initially. Apparently, we created a very effective medicine for getting addicted. We started to get “Pain Clinics” popping up in the area a few years back. They appeared in the poorest counties in the area. I know one of the Drs and she went to prison for forging scripts.