There was a big push in medical industry in late 90s/early 2000s for prescribing more opiates to relieve pain cuz poor pain control was deleterious to many patients recovery or treatment. They even started saying things like it is a patients right to be pain free and that pain was a sixth vital sign and called for prescribing folks to be more liberal in their doses...many practioners were leery but went along (they were afraid of encouraging opiate dependance, misuse and abuse).Well guess what. In the wake of so many other health related issues the risks of the above possibilies were downplayed and now we have more dead people.Coincidence? There are others factors for sure but the drive to be more liberal with doses may have led to the wider public availability of addictive opiates and without close monitoring...voila’
There was a big push...
Then there was a CMS mandate: If you want to get Medicare or Medicaid money you must push addictive pain killers on your patients. If your Medical School wants Federal money it must teach that it is cruel and unusual to allow a patient to feel even a small amount of pain.
On a separate digression, in Atlanta, Transgenders have a rate of HIV exponentially higher than other Gays. And Gays have a rate of HIV exponentially higher than straights.