~75% of opioid misuse starts with people using them without a prescription. [0]

~90% of people who are prescribed opioids never develop addiction problems. [1]

Despite being in the midst of an opioid crisis with skyrocketing mortality rates, the mortality rate from prescription opiates has been ~stable for the last ~15 years. [2]

[0] https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUH-DetTab...

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25785523

[2] http://www.ncsl.org/portals/1/documents/health/APeeples0118_...

Sounds great, until you realize that there are >200M opioid prescriptions filled every year. The numbers are large in absolute terms.

Something like 6% of american adults abuse alcohol -- and alcohol is less "addictive" than an opioid for most of the population.

Wow, one in 10 people prescribed opioids become addicted? I wouldn't like those odds.

I don't know if that statistic is per course of prescription or per person, It's probably even lower if you know your family to have no history of addiction. If it is per person I'm frankly surprised it's that low given how prevalent genetic predisposition to addictive behaviors is.

Opioid use without a prescription includes the massive amount of oxycodone sold as a street drug, which helped to seed this crisis.

I knew of people buying oxycodone on the street a decade ago, and it was clear their dealers had a supply of name brand pills beyond "pills stolen from the medicine cabinet".

One illustration of this is that when they changed the formula to prevent injection and insufflation, heroin use rose. [0]

I seem to recall earlier stories linking the rise of prescription opiates in general to a resurgence in what had been declining heroin abuse, but I'm not finding anything.

[0] https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-oxycontin-20170109...