With good intentions the DEA made it much harder for people to get prescriptions for opioids and greatly reduced diversion. 20 years ago it was much easier for

With good intentions the DEA made it much harder for people to get prescriptions for opioids and greatly reduced diversion. 20 years ago it was much easier for people to get a prescription for painkillers and it’s also likely it wasn’t as prevalent an issue at that time. There were also plenty of stories of employees at medical facilities and pharmacies diverting large amount of pills undetected. There were bad doctors, pharmacies and completely fake facilities as well. The DEA cracked down on this greatly using a variety of tools and it’s arguably been extremely effective. There are good reasons to think that the combination of cheap street drugs and expensive and harder to get prescription drugs is responsible for the rise in overdoses. It seems most addicts go from something like Vicodin to Heroin is price and access. Medicine and Big Pharma aren’t blameless, but bad policy is a major factor as far as I can tell.