The problem isn't with the pain killers being available. Its that they were pushed on those who didn't need them. Marketing drugs on TV used to be illegal. Reagan made it legal. Reagan really fucked a lot of things up in retrospect (and I naively supported reagan ). He was controlled by Jew Lou Wasserman who ran Universal in Hollywood and who paid Reagan off by selling him his ranch land under market where Reagan is now buried. Now of course it was actually doctor payoffs which got them to prescribe unneeded opiodes but still. And it was actually the jewish Sackler family who was apparently the worst .