Just so this doesn’t come off like too radical an idea: legalization of all drugs has been a position of The Economist since 1989. “Legalize, Control, Discourage.”

https://www.economist.com/leaders/1989/01/21/hooked-on-just-...

The majority of opioid deaths are due to fentanyl or cut opioids, something that would not exist if there were a regulated legal market.

> In 2018 ~130 people died every day in the US overdosing on opioids

Alcohol kills literally twice that number of people per day and is a factor in nearly half of all violent crime and is a quarter of a trillion dollar market, and yet we seem to fine with that trade-off even though it has absolutely ZERO therapeutic application.

> putting "crisis" in quotes like it's a manufactured epidemic

The epidemic might not be manufactured, but given the numbers re: alcohol the outrage certainly seems to be. It's a moral panic, imo.

From your link:

"including prescription pain relievers, heroin, and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl"

So recreational drug abusers are included in the count? I believe the OP was only taking prescription drugs.

Is there a count somewhere of just the overdoses on prescribed opioids?

It's tricky to meaningfully separate these cases, as many opioid addictions start with prescriptions and move to more available opioids when the prescriptions end.

This is substantially less common than is widely believed.

This varies a lot by area, but it isn't rare.

From what I can tell, the link between Purdue Pharma and the Sackler's campaign to get opioids prescribed to patients with pain - and indeed, their use to relieve pain in general - and the widespread opioid addiction and overdoae crisis seemed to be extremely tenuous and mostly pushed for political reasons. Basically, we wanted someone big and high-profile to blame that fitted into all our nice neat existing narratives about evil megacorporations and the wealthy, and plenty of journalists and prosecutors were willing to give that to us.

OxyContin/oxycodone (30mg tablet)

2002 8.8 million pills

2011 781.5 million pills

The US didn't experience a massive increase of numbers of people in pain.

You may have a point here but it's hard to know without more context. For example: why only OxyContin/oxycodone listed here? oxycontin was still a fairly new drug in 2002. Also there are numerous other opioids available, many of those "new pills" might have been replacing other opioids. Also you seem to completely rule out the possibility that there was untreated or under treated pain out there (which I strongly suspect is the case).

Again I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it's not possible to know from the context in your post alone.