> 4 out of 5 pharmacy-filled prescriptions is not 4 out of 5 prescriptions

As opposed to the non-pharmacy filled prescriptions people pick up?

Your argument is that the statistic only works because so many people don't pick up meds their doctor calls in for them?

I'm not a statistician so maybe I'm not understanding correctly, but that seems like a very weak argument.

While 4/5 is shocking any way you look at it, the stronger argument for why this stat is misleading is because it does not take into account how long the prescription lasts. Anecdotally, I was given basically a week's worth after all 3 of my surgeries. Tough to find stats on these things but I could see opiod prescriptions being 2x the number of prescriptions because the number of "doses" are half what other non-addictive substances are. Still, that would make opiods 2/3 of pharmacy-filled "doses".

Yes, lots of opiod prescriptions for like 4-7 days, but there's got to be more for chronic treatment when you factor in thewy might be 30-90 days between refills.

While that is a good point, there are many other frequently prescribed drugs with shorter rx periods - antibiotics, benzodiazipines, sleep medication, emergency medications like inhalers and Epi pens to name a few. If you look at the list of most commonly prescribed drugs¹, opioids aren't even in the top 15, which makes that statistic even more concerning, albeit obvious in hindsight.

1: https://clincalc.com/DrugStats/Top300Drugs.aspx