In our previous episode, number 402, we looked at the rise of the opioid epidemic.

We are seeing more people killed because of opioid overdose than traffic accidents.

The tragedy seemed to come out of nowhere, but in fact it had distinctive roots in the

pharmaceutical industry.

They really somehow fooled us into thinking that pain was a vital sign and that we needed

to treat it more liberally.

In government policy, what happened during that growth was that prices for opioids

came way down due to government subsidies.

And in the highly addictive nature of a medicine that had been promoted as not being addictive.

I was taken 500 milligrams of oxycontin a day and so it progressed very, very quickly and

I couldn't stop.

The opioid crisis we learned is really a story of supply and demand.

In retrospect, there's plenty of blame to go around.

There was inattention and wishful thinking and almost certainly some deception or at least

greed.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of people have died, countless families have been

broken.

And one unintended consequence of the crisis is that many people who have legitimate

need for pain management and who have never abused those drugs now find it much harder

to get the medicine they need.

Even such person wrote to us recently, I was born with severe scoliosis, he said, and

needed multiple surgeries starting as an 11-year-old.

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