This seems to underestimate the impact of prescription pain killers on the opioid crisis.

"A study of young, urban injection drug users interviewed in 2008 and 2009 found that 86 percent had used opioid pain relievers nonmedically prior to using heroin, and their initiation into nonmedical use was characterized by three main sources of opioids: family, friends, or personal prescriptions (Lankenau et al., 2012). This rate represents a shift from historical trends. Of people entering treatment for heroin addiction who began abusing opioids in the 1960s, more than 80 percent started with heroin. Of those who began abusing opioids in the 2000s, 75 percent reported that their first opioid was a prescription drug (Cicero et al., 2014)."

https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/rela...

People getting hooked on prescription opiates is a single digit percentage of the patients prescribed. It is a large double digit percentage of opiate overdose deaths. Thats what happens when you take something reasonably safe and overprescribe it by orders of magnitude because of criminally misleading misinformation from Purdue Pharmaceuticals.

A vast majority of those that become addicted to illegal opiates start with legal opiates, and transition when access or cash becomes a problem.

Sure, drugs illegally diverted.

That doesn’t mean you should be denying pain medication to people who need it.