I don't think that's the case, unless you go back many decades.
Purdue was in part so effective because they spent millions 'educating' (and bribing) doctors and making up a '5th vital sign' in order to push huge quantities of drugs. This was on purpose. Those face in pain posters you see still originally came from Purdue.
This always comes up in these threads, that perhaps we've swung too far in the direction of limiting access to pain meds for legit patients.
Which definitely has merit.
But that doesn't take away from what Sacklers and Kappor et al did.
from my understanding long term prescription of opiates in modern medicine wasn't really a thing before Purdue's marketing (and still isn't outside of late stage cancer in most countries).
So that's what I was getting at in responding to 'other opiates having been stigmatized in previous moral panics,' I think you'd have to go back to prohibition to find a similar time of heavy long term use 'medically'
Purdue was in part so effective because they spent millions 'educating' (and bribing) doctors and making up a '5th vital sign' in order to push huge quantities of drugs. This was on purpose. Those face in pain posters you see still originally came from Purdue.
This always comes up in these threads, that perhaps we've swung too far in the direction of limiting access to pain meds for legit patients.
Which definitely has merit.
But that doesn't take away from what Sacklers and Kappor et al did.
from my understanding long term prescription of opiates in modern medicine wasn't really a thing before Purdue's marketing (and still isn't outside of late stage cancer in most countries).
So that's what I was getting at in responding to 'other opiates having been stigmatized in previous moral panics,' I think you'd have to go back to prohibition to find a similar time of heavy long term use 'medically'