in state governments that are Repub. ? Go figure.

Anyone who was even alive and listening to the news (let alone in law enforcement) knew that Oxycontin was being over-prescribed/manufactured 20 years ago. "Hillbilly heroin"--nobody cared except for throwing the guys robbing pharmacies in jail.

A drug designed to help with end stage cancer pain does not sell billions of tablets per year if prescribed properly. My guess is there were plenty of political contributions by drug companies and their individual top execs to make looking the other way acceptable conduct to many politicians.

Then when things got out of hand they cracked down on prescription rules so that only respectable people would be able to document their need. So less respectable people who were addicted to opiods, turned to heroin. Now, heroin dealers are cutting an already variable quality product with an extremely variable substance like fake Fentanyl. Hence increase in overdoses.

Seems to me the first treatment would be to make available a verifiable dose of a drug to calm withdrawal symptoms. Not going to happen politically but it would lessen the deaths brought on by 20 years of bad policy that included allowing hundreds of "pain" clinics to spring up along state borders without ever questioning if maybe something unseemly was going on.