Personally, I have never bought into the "opioid crisis" line.
Before I left the school board a couple of years ago, they passed (over my objection) an intrusive policy to spy on American kids .... I mean to prevent the opioid crisis from looming larger, which had yet to surface in our little rural corner of SW Pa.
There was a rasher of newspaper articles about opioid OD's and seizures ... which just sort of disappeared after about 6 months.
I of course forgot about it until I read this article this morning.
I DO blame public schools for developing numbed and stupid people that buy into every fear imaginable so that politicians can pass legislation to further enslave us.
Consider the recent "shutdown" and the "We don't need the TSA anymore" stories coming out now.
Many of us argued we never DID, but it was post 911 and there wasn't much anyone could do about THAT momentum.
“And if a patient NEEDS 10mg p/day for pain, is he an addict also ?”
Absolutely. Inarguable.
And I am hard pressed to understand what situation requires that much dope, and for which an alternative is not available.
Other than cancer at end of life.
There’s probably 10 million addicts that will say “nothing else works” in order to preserve their addiction.