What separates the opioid crisis from all previous drug epidemics is that it has its roots in drugs that are perfectly legal to use—FDA-approved and highly regulated painkillers much like Subsys. In the 1990s and early in the following decade, new voices in the medical community advanced the idea that pain needed to be treated more forcefully, that fear of opioids was excessive and had to be overcome so that patients wouldn’t needlessly suffer. Medical students and doctors were widely taught that legitimate pain patients would not become addicted.
