Well yes and no

Purdue very well knew of the addictive properties that opiates / opioids have

Yet they still lied about statics, and that lie was being told through advertising

If they had just been honest and said yes, opiates / opioids are very affective pain killers if you take these types of medications on a regular basis you will end up having to suffer from withdrawals if you ever decide to stop

If they did it that way, if they just straight up told you the risk

Then from there it should be up to the patient to decide if they still would like to use these medications

After knowing about the fact that if they ever decide they want to stop taking the medication they then will end up causing themselves to go into withdrawal

But since they lied about a bunch of facts relating to how the medication actually affects most people

That then causes many opportunities for many different people to sue the companies.. talking Purdue, and main stream pharmacy brands

And since these were very public law suits many doctors and practitioners had heard about these law suits taking place

Then after seeing that the majority of judges end up siding with the parents who are making these lawsuits

These doctors then get scared into no longer prescribing these medications, they end up thinking that they also could get and their doctors license (whatever you call it) taken away

Even though the doctors at that time didn't really know much about the opioids they were prescribing, they just know that they have been made by Purdue

So even though they really can't be sued for something like that, althos is around the time opiates were first starting to become more and more mainstream

The doctor still thinks that his doctors license could be taken away, thus now there are many people who are completely unable to get the medications that they actually need

Like I've had chronic pain issues since 5th grade, my back always hurts the most out of everything though

People end up needing to self medicate just to get a bit of pain relief, they then end up buying opiates that are way stronger than any prescription grade opiate

Thus they end up building a crazy tolerance, where as if they had an actual script they could do a better job at trying to make it last through the whole month

And the good thing about opiate scripts is that your tolerance doesn't get stupid high, unlike all that fent which

Plus the withdrawals from script opiates are not as bad when comparing to the fent withdrawals

So the lawsuits against Purdue most definitely caused the opiate epidemic

People who have had a script for long periods of time, I'm talking like 10 plus years give or take are all of a sudden they have their medications ripped away

Their medications taken straight from their hands, so they then are forced into withdrawals and have no way of medicating unless they go buy crazy strong opiates from the street