The main "fear porn" here that I think relates, and it's more of a tangent than any direct connection, is the propaganda associated with the War On Drugs, just

The main "fear porn" here that I think relates, and it's more of a tangent than any direct connection, is the propaganda associated with the War On Drugs, just as a comparison to the realities of the opioid epidemic. Some of the issues that were associated with various illegal drug epidemics were legitimate (particularly addictive substances that had the potential to destroy your health like heroin and cocaine), but the propaganda ended up being a moral panic implemented for sometimes questionable (possibly tribalism oriented) reasons, where a few substances (some of them, like cannabis, being relatively harmless) ended up getting demonized, a way-too-high amount of Americans got arrested for trifles as a result, and so forth. Ironically a large portion of the drugs in this epidemic were not in this much demonized category. Back on topic, the "messaging" here that directly relates, as far as the opioid epidemic goes, is the opposite: the lax regulation of the marketing for prescription drugs. Purdue Pharmaceutical was allowed to engage in a lot of aggressive marketing courting physicians with plenty of symposiums and swag. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622774/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622774/) The marketing hugely downplayed the addiction potential of Oxycontin, over-promoting the use cases and underplaying risk. (Along the way you get some IMHO absurd swag like an Oxycontin-sponsored 50s swing music compilation -- https://www.reddit.com/r/SwingDancing/comments/593xof/til_that_purdue_pharma_sponsoredgave_away_swing/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SwingDancing/comments/593xof/til_th... -- I mean, what?) This helped contribute to the opioid over-prescription problem. Sober, fact based analysis -- present in neither of the above scenarios -- unfortunately is in short supply these days. Personally, I haven't seen the sort of aggressive marketing you see in America for prescription drugs in any other country -- at least, I don't recall seeing the sort of direct-to-consumer prescription ads anywhere else, (I was able to find articles that said DTCA is quite restricted in Europe --https://www.pharmafield.co.uk/in_depth/pharmaceutical-direct-to-consumer-advertising-in-europe/ https://www.pharmafield.co.uk/in_depth/pharmaceutical-direct...). I think pharmacy-to-physician marketing is still allowed in most places, but the above shows that work needs to be done to ensure that this marketing also is sober and fact based. Even physicians can be persuaded by "marketing swag". (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5623540/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5623540/)