That was how what had been a national, decade-long prescription drug epidemic morphed, right around 2010, into a heroin epidemic. In later years, certain members of the Sackler family would call attention to precisely this transition, casting the shift to heroin (and, eventually, to another, even more lethal substitute, fentanyl) as an exculpatory trump card for the family. Here was the proof that people who became addicted to OxyContin were not legitimate pain patients but omnivorous drug abusers.
