At the same time, know that every time a politician gets a bullet point on his re-election flier for "fighting the opioid epidemic" or "keeping our streets clean", there are real people in real pain who get stranded without the medication they need to function.
After the birth of my youngest child, my wife spent the immediate recovery period blindsided by pain because new regulations meant the hospital was unwilling to prescribe opioid medication for "routine" things like an uncomplicated childbirth. She didn't have to deal with that for any of our other children, because back then, the hospital was willing to administer these medications.
Medicine is already over 8% of GDP, but the political complex is not satisfied with that -- every day it gets harder and more expensive to stay on the right side of the law while obtaining necessary medications.
In Florida, it is now unlawful for a physician to write for more than 3 days of narcotic painkillers (if there are extenuating circumstances, this can be pushed to a week, but the rationale must be documented and approved by at least one other physician, iirc). If your pain hasn't subsided in 3 days, you need to make another appointment -- which means paying another copay, or if uninsured, paying another out-of-pocket office visit -- to get a refill.
If you require pain medication for a chronic condition, you now, by law, have to acquire a separate doctor who specializes in "pain management"; your family doctor is legally not allowed to write for more. Good luck finding an appointment at a reputable pain management clinic within 3 months.
This is not a simple thing, and these medications continue to be prescribed because they help a great deal of people, relatively few of whom descend into addiction (and note that many who do go to the streets are driven there because their docs or pharmacists got spooked by the DEA and cut them off, leaving them in mind-numbing pain, or because they couldn't afford the substantial financial and social costs required to get controlled Rxs renewed and refilled on an ongoing basis).