[throwaway0a5e]

The pharma companies getting people addicted on opioids killed pretty much nobody. For the most part they just created a hell of a lot of functional addicts. Not great but not the end of the world. The feds cutting a bunch of junkies off from their safe and legal suppliers and forcing them to source their fix from the black market was what killed a lot of people.

Obviously the stuff the pharma companies did should be punished but blaming them for the body count and all the other bad things that happened once the feds cracked down is nothing more than a typical exercise in government being unwilling to hold itself accountable.

[codezero]

This isn't data so I'm not refuting you, but I have several EMT acquaintances and basically all their stories are about repeat opiate addicts getting revived again and again until they are dead a few months later.

Ignoring the deaths, the economic drain of having so many people addicted to drugs and being unemployed/working at low function likely has had massive effects that are very difficult to measure.