[notus]

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.