That's not recreational use.

That's just the problem isn't it? People are prescribed a drug for medicinal purposes that is so addictive and so readily distributed for minor ailments that medicinal use inevitably turns to recreational use after the prescription runs out.

Louis Theroux's "Dark States: Heroin Town" is a good account of how these addictions progress in the US, and some of the reasons for the growing numbers we are seeing.

Opioid prescription has tripled from 1999 to 2015. Meanwhile, deaths only started to skyrocket very recently (starting in 2010-2011), probably mostly due to cheap heroin being adulterated with fentanyl.

Opioid abuse is mostly flat or (among youth) decreasing:

https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUH-FRR1-2...

http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/mtf-overv...

There is no actual link between opioid prescription and subsequent heroin use shown by any research.

https://grokinfullness.blogspot.com/2017/09/debunking-standa...

You're right, I learned something here. Thank you for correcting me. Fentanyl seems like the culprit.

No I get that but I get the impression those aren't the circumstances the parent was interested in hearing about.