I don't mean to detract from your anecdote but the Florida and the CDC clearly sees a link in overprescription of pain killers and the death rate. The root cause is the way we are handling opiates in general which changed in 2001 and the prioritization of "comfort" of the patient when they are in pain.

Anecdotal, I've been in pain, multiple times in my life, where Doctors were literally confused by the fact I wasn't taking pain medication and immediate would prescribe opiates without a second thought. A couple even made comments [one Doctor who used to treat soldiers assumed it was a macho thing and told me I was being silly, just take the drugs].

The main reason I don't take pain killers is I've got medical allergies so I reserve the handful of things I can take for emergencies but they'll casually try to suggest/prescribe them for trivial things.

> People I went to high school with no hope for the future were doing meth because it was 3 minutes of bliss in stark contrast to the whirlpool of suck their lives had become.

Yeah, but would you agree they would turn to drinking if they wouldn't/couldn't do illegal drugs?

http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0701-opioid-painkill...

> Health care providers in the highest prescribing state, Alabama, wrote almost three times as many of these prescriptions per person as those in the lowest prescribing state, Hawaii. Most of the highest prescribing states were in the South. Previous research has shown that regional variation in use of prescriptions cannot be explained by the underlying health status of the population.

> The Vital Signs report also contains a study highlighting the success of Florida in reversing prescription drug overdose trends. Results showed that after statewide legislative and enforcement actions in 2010 and 2011, the death rate from prescription drug overdose decreased 23 percent between 2010 and 2012. Florida officials had taken these actions in response to a 28 percent increase in the drug overdose death rate over the preceding years (2006-2010).

> Declines in death rates in Florida for specific prescription painkillers (oxycodone, methadone, and hydrocodone) and sedatives paralleled declines in prescribing rates for those drugs. This report was based on Florida Medical Examiners Commission data from 2006 to 2012 and IMS Health National Prescription Audit data from 2008 to 2012.

They do the same with antibiotics:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/doctors-urged-to-stop-prescribin...

> Despite years of warnings, doctors still overprescribe antibiotics for acute respiratory infections even though most are caused by viruses that those drugs cannot help. The consequences are serious: overuse of antibiotics is fueling the rise of drug-resistant superbugs, and patients can suffer significant side effects from drugs they don't really need.

http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/who-is-responsibl...

> The Joint Commission, which accredits health facilities, issued pain-management standards in 2001 that instructed hospitals to measure pain—you may be familiar with the smiling-to-crying faces scale—and to prioritize its treatment. Elizabeth Zhani, a spokeswoman for the Joint Commission, told me that their standards “were based upon both the emerging and compelling science of that time, and upon the consensus of a broad array of professionals.” Yet Purdue, according to a report issued by the U. S. Government Accountability Office, helped fund a “pain-management educational program” organized by the Joint Commission; a related agreement allowed Purdue to disseminate educational materials on pain management, and this, in the words of the report, “may have facilitated its access to hospitals to promote OxyContin.”

> In a policy drafted by several people with ties to narcotics makers, including Haddox, the Federation of State Medical Boards called on the boards to punish doctors for inadequately treating pain, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Federation also reportedly accepted money from pharmaceutical firms to produce and distribute narcotics-prescribing guidelines. In an e-mail, the Federation maintained: “[Our] most recent policy reflects the considerable body of research and experience accrued since our last series of formal policies related to opioid prescribing and addiction were adopted in 2004. Our latest guidelines, adopted this year, acknowledge that evidence for the risk associated with opioids has surged, while evidence for the benefits of opioids for long-term use has remained controversial and insufficient.”

> In 2007, Purdue Pharma and three of its top executives pleaded guilty to criminal charges that they had misled the F.D.A., clinicians, and patients about the risks of OxyContin addiction and abuse by aggressively marketing the drug to providers and patients as a safe alternative to short-acting narcotics. (Doctors had been taught that because OxyContin was time-released, it wouldn’t cause a high that would lead to addiction.)