>-Several factors are likely to have contributed to the severity of the current prescription drug abuse problem. They include drastic increases in the number of prescriptions written and dispensed, greater social acceptability for using medications for different purposes, and aggressive marketing by pharmaceutical companies.

>I saw some statistics recently correlating the likelihood of opioid addiction with visits to specific MD's and they're alarming.

My wife, an MD, had checked, back then when we lived in the US, some of the drugs which were prescribed to schoolkids for various reasons (depression, ADD etc) - they were mostly narcotics, perhaps diluted but hey, take three at a time and you get high. Except these were about 4 times more costly than on the corner, plus the visit to the dealer aka doctor (which is free on the corner) but at least these were legal.