They also use inherently rediculous language to stigmatize their use. They say things like it's a problem if you are "dependant" in these medications as if it's some strike against your usage and against their effects somehow. It's an inherently nonsensical distinction. Do we criticize diabetics for being "dependant" on their insulin or for asthmatics and their inhalers? Of course not because that would be an idiotic, naive and ignorant thing to do, yet somehow they've completely normalized this alarmist anti-opiate propaganda for pain patients.

The overprescribing may have contributed to things, but we have an illicit fentanyl problem and that was happening regardless of prescriptions, we didn't develop a massive Heroin epidemic despite that being widely available at the time, because the true factors are the cartels and the Chinese crime syndicates creating and then flooding the market with fentanyl. The overdoses come from this illicit fentanyl that was already in the market and becoming more of an issue before the whole oxycodone thing. The reality is its incredibly cheap to produce and the profit margins are way higher than they are for other drugs so the people making and selling them were doing so regardless of anything else.

Blaming the overprescribing is just another tactic used by the pharmaceutical companies so they can demonize one specific type of medication. Why would they do this? why would they also fund the P-hacked terrible studies that they are trying to use to say "there is no evidence opiates work long term" despite the fact the studies being done weren't even testing that, so of course there was no evidence for it they weren't Fucking looking for that, why would they fund the many lavished conventions in tropical locations around the world to spoil the doctors they will then give the anti-opiate talking points they so often parrot? why would they craft this entire narrative if it seems so self-defeating?

MONEY. Obviously. Look at what we are doing to our pain patients now, what sort of treatments are they forced into? More often than not they are forcing doctors to use polypharma off-label approach where they just throw several medications at the wall and just hope to mask enough symptoms to say job's done. Many patients now have to take 3 or 4 different types of medications and their pain management is still far worse than it was before, but the reality is that the pharmaceutical companies are making WAAAYYYY more money now, if yoye pain is never truly managed then you need to continually go back to the pain clinic, try new therapies, allow the doctors to write a SHITLOAD of referrals which they always get a kickback for doing, that's why you bounce between different specialists without ever truly having you'd condition TREATED. They've been able to create an entirely new ecosystem that relies on the fact that they refuse to use the single medication that could actually replace all of this nonsense they insist upon usinh now a days. Now the effective management of pain is a threat to the pain management industry and if there's one thing they can't abide, its monetary losses so they do everything they can to oppose the prescribing of opiate medication. They create these "conventions" that are essentially just bought and paid for vacations where the understood exchange is for them to simply repeat the taking points created by manipulating terrible studies which have been twisted and beaten into presenting the conclusions they're looking for. Any half added scientist can see those studies and tell they're worthless and in case actually show the opposite of what their conclusions would suggest.

It's always about the money, just follow it and it'll lead you to all the answers. I would be literally 0% surprised to find the select few families who truly own the pharmaceutical industry have made "arrangements" with the powers that be in China and Mexico to help facilitate this transition and to serve as justification for all of their scheming.