> And remember - we did have a long experiment with legally prescribed opioids, and their widespread availability contributed to the current addiction crisis.
People couldn't just go to a store; trusted family advisors were overprescribing due to intentionally misleading advertising. The addiction crisis is what happens when insurance no longer covers the pills.
I'd say the addiction crisis started when people got addicted. The attendant economic and social crisis then got worse as legal pills became less available. But whether someone gets addicted by way of an overprescribing doctor or by way of picking a bottle of laudinum off the shelf at a liquor store, that person is probably going to become addicted. The question is whether that means they'll have to go looking for potentially dangerous street drugs.
People couldn't just go to a store; trusted family advisors were overprescribing due to intentionally misleading advertising. The addiction crisis is what happens when insurance no longer covers the pills.