Those Florida boys certainly deserve their admonition.  What about all the doctors who spoon-fed their patients on opioids for the past 20 - 30 years?  I believe that many were investors in the companies that make these drugs.  What used to be called the Field of Medicine is now the Medical Industry.  I've known personally (family and friends) who were normal, functioning human beings until their doctors started prescribing these pain killers ... and kept refilling their 'scripts way past the time when such medicine should have been needed.  These doctors created many addicts.  Most refuse to own any culpability for their part.

@rusty:  I had a slipped disc in late December 2017.  It took a month for them to even figure out what was going on and my surgery was finally scheduled for April 8th, 2018.  With a disc pushing incredibly hard on my spinal cord, you can just imagine the kind of pain I was in.  They offered me just about ANYTHING I wanted including Dilaudid and Morphine.  I refused and managed my pain for over three months with a daily 10 mg marijuana edible and 1,000 mg of Tylenol.  It worked.  As you mentioned, I was scared to DEATH of getting hooked on that sh*t.

@robslob I've had a couple of close calls, myself.

In 1984 I had a pretty horrific accident that landed me in a hospital for 8 weeks.  I had a very similar pharmaceutical diet that you did.  While the med's where comforting, I conjured up the wherewithal to tell the Dr.s "no more".  I got through that.

A few years later I had knee surgery related to the first episode.  The operation didn't go exactly as intended and I had some SEVERE pain associated with the knee not draining as it should have.  I was in some pretty intense post-op pain.  This is when Oxycontin was being prescribed.  Full-strength, full-fledged Oxycontin - not the Oxicodon (sp?) that they use now.  I was given a 10 day supply.  After 3 days, I figured I'd better pull the reins.  After only 3 days (2 pills - twice daily) and stopping - I woke up freezing my a$$ off yet sweating buckets.  I was experiencing withdrawal after only 3 days!  I rarely even take an aspirin anymore.  Yes, those THC/CBD gummies are worth their weight in gold!

I'm sure that drugs like these are an absolute blessing for terminally ill cancer patients.  But doctors at that time would write this stuff up for anybody who said they hurt.  

@rusty:  I forgot to mention that I DID in fact take the opioids after my surgery.  I didn't have much choice.  You have your lumbar spine opened up, two discs removed and three vertebrae fused together, you do not have much choice but to take them unless you want to end up in an asylum from the intense pain.  If I remember I took them for about six weeks and never became addicted.

I watched American Pain today.  Shocking what these two brothers got away with in Florida.  Many patients were driving from as far as Kentucky and Tennessee to get their opiates which were being dispensed like candy.  To make it seem legitimate, they bought an MRI machine and put it in a trailer BEHIND A STRIP CLUB.  Anyone who came to the clinic without a reason for an opiate prescription was sent for an MRI and the MRI was ALWAYS interpreted as detecting a problem which justified opiates.  Obviously an unethical M.D. was signing off on the MRI's.  Broward County in Florida had an epidemic of babies being born addicted to opiates.  Patients were snorting and shooting up in the parking lot of the clinic.  One guy was so high when he left that he tried to drive through a railway stop barrier, was hit by a train and killed.  There were multiple such stories regarding car accidents, and of course many O.D.'s.  And still the prescriptions continued.  Fortunately both the FBI and local police eventually got involved and both brothers went to prison.