But MS Contin wasn’t sold as a virtually risk-free panacea for chronic pain. Other opiate painkillers had been confined to small doses and combined with acetaminophen or Tylenol to make them hard to liquefy and inject. These drugs were Vicodin, Lorcet, Lortab, Percocet, and others. Yet even those were abused. Moreover, no one had imagined that a pill containing a drug similar to heroin would be marketed almost like an over-the-counter drug. But by 1996 American physicians were tenderized to accepting opiates for chronic pain. Undertreated pain was an epidemic and physicians now had the duty,
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