It's a bit more complicated than that: the pharmaceutical companies underplayed the addictiveness and overplayed the benefits of opioids for years - so even under doctor supervision tons of folks got hooked, and many turned to the black market when they got cut off.
https://www.northpointwashington.com/blog/big-pharma-big-lie... is an interesting article about this in the context of Oxycontin. One detail I find particularly interesting is that Purdue pharma marketed it as a 12 hour pain killer when the data clearly only supported it being good for 8 hours... leading to increasingly stronger doses being prescribed rather that admit the 12hr guideline was wrong.
https://www.northpointwashington.com/blog/big-pharma-big-lie... is an interesting article about this in the context of Oxycontin. One detail I find particularly interesting is that Purdue pharma marketed it as a 12 hour pain killer when the data clearly only supported it being good for 8 hours... leading to increasingly stronger doses being prescribed rather that admit the 12hr guideline was wrong.