[interfixus]

I certainly know people here (Denmark) who are hooked on prescribed opiates for no real good reasons at all. They are, in all but their own perception, addicts.

Seems to me it comes down to competence and ethics of individual doctors, as well as to preferences and susceptability of individual patients, of course.

We are not experiencing quite the epidemic proportions of the US, presumably owing to a different structure of health services, and probably a higher general level of scepticism towards medical authority, but the mechanisms and the potential are clearly in place.