I was looking through the literature to see if there was good evidence for this, but didn't find much. This paper seems to address the issue most directly, but

I was looking through the literature to see if there was good evidence for this, but didn't find much. This paper seems to address the issue most directly, but fails to find much of a causal relationship; indeed, the increase in heroin use predates the reversal in opioid prescription trends. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1508490#t=article http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1508490#t=article I don't doubt that prescription opioid abuse is itself a problem, nor that it may exacerbate the heroin epidemic, but the evidence suggests that it does not play a large casual role.