In Sam Quinone's "Dreamland" (well worth a read) he talks about how the opioid epidemic stayed out of the public eye for so long, and he attributes a lot of it

In Sam Quinone's "Dreamland" (well worth a read) he talks about how the opioid epidemic stayed out of the public eye for so long, and he attributes a lot of it to the general perception of addiction as a moral failure, or weakness - parents don't talk about their dead children dying of addiction, because of the shame and judgement they feel [0]. So a lot of the deaths (and the suffering that can lead up to it) is hushed up. This tide is turning, now, as people are more willing to speak honestly and openly about how they and their families have been affected by addiction, and the realisation that anyone can be addicted to opiates, and it's not just a matter of not having sufficient backbone to resist their effects. On the matter of self-driving car investment, vs opiate addiction treatment - car makers need to turn a profit, so they need something new to sell. A lot of people also commute daily, and don't enjoy doing so. So in the (distant) shiny future where your car drives you to work, they are building something that I think a lot of people will be willing to pay for, or use as a service. [0] Addendum - it also avoided the public eye because of where addiction was happening, and who to. A lot of it started in smaller towns, often those struggling economically. The kind of places that don't get a lot of attention.