Thank you, thank you, thank you!
People who become addicted to these drugs are to blame, not the manufacturers. I don’t know about you but whenever I’ve taken one of these drugs, I have never gotten “high.” Sleepy, maybe, but the most important thing is that it has relieved terrible pain. With me it was two toothaches over a period of a couple of years. I thank these drug makers from the bottom of my heart. I would have died of a stroke or heart attack without them!
It is a matter of fact that CDC or whoever the hell is the the official scorekeeper for opioid deaths does not publicly distinguish between legally prescribed and illegal drug deaths. This greatly exaggerates the problem and enables casting blame on legitimate painkillers.
A very recent unbiased report yielded the following:
"Conclusion
Not all opioids are identical in abuse potential and likely lethality, yet government statistics group causes of death in a way that obscures the importance of identifying specific agents involved in deadly overdoses. Searching the CDC Wonder database reveals that the recent spike in deaths is primarily due to illicit fentanyl. Targeting legal prescriptions is thus unlikely to reduce overdose deaths, but it may increase them by driving more users to illegal sources. "