My question is are the drugs themselves to blame, or BigPharma who uses them with/without the knowledge of their pharmacological effects in the short and long term?
As in, "Purdue Pharma knowingly addicted millions of Americans to opioids."
(As an aside, in Spanish at least "suicide" is also a transitive verb in some cases, as in "The Roman emperor suicided the senator." This was because in Rome emperors would knowingly and deliberately create circumstances (credible threats for instance) that would leave the victim with effectively no choice but to do what many others in the same situation would do).
Part of it is pharmaceutical companies overselling them as safer alternatives to previous drugs that caused epidemics. Oxycodone was marketed as safer than Heroin when it first came out. The other part is we still treat drug users as criminals and there is a lot of prejudice against addicts. People seem to think it is just a matter of willpower to beat it and it isn't. Drug users return to drugs because society still shuns them even in recovery.
As in, "Purdue Pharma knowingly addicted millions of Americans to opioids."
(As an aside, in Spanish at least "suicide" is also a transitive verb in some cases, as in "The Roman emperor suicided the senator." This was because in Rome emperors would knowingly and deliberately create circumstances (credible threats for instance) that would leave the victim with effectively no choice but to do what many others in the same situation would do).