It started with purdue and oxycodone. They pushed that minor pains should be treated rather than severe pains in end of life situations.
Head aches, sports injuries, work injuries all of a sudden became how they made their money. Thus getting normal, working people hooked.
They lied that its time release technology made it less addictive when in fact the drug was ineffective and didn't nearly last the 12 hours They said it did.
So when people started feeling their pain after 8 hours, they just said up the dose and it will become effective. Which was horse **** and just made people entirely dependant.
How did they get away with it? They ran shonky trials in some back water in Puerto Rico which they massaged the statistics of. They bribed the FDA official to get it approved. They ended up putting him on 400k per year on their payroll once it had gone through.
When it came out that people had distorted abusing it, they ran a smear campaign against drug abusers ruining a perfectly safe drug.
They were straight up Machiavellian.
Michael Keaton was in a very good miniseries about it a couple of years ago called dopesick. Well worth watching.
Now it's synthetic opioid like fentanyl making things worse but oxycodone started it.
