i think another thing is people don't realize how well-heeled a lot of opiate addicts are, so they see someone from a similar class background to them talking about the difficulty of getting opiates and they automatically assume they are not drug-seeking.

addiction does not see class, especially for these drugs

> I suggest there is more than one 'opioid crisis' unfolding.

I qualified it as the prescription opioid crisis. It gets conflated with the current fentanyl crisis. But the pill mill crisis peaked decades ago and waned not long after.

Fentanyl overdose cases now include people who hadn't even been born when pill mills were the driver. Yet, the association continues.

For nearly as long, we've had Dr's who serially refuse to prescribe pain relief, for fear of risking their license. Compounding that are draconian state laws, some so extreme they limit pain meds to 3 days max.

For over a decade, chronic pain patients

...as in, people I know

...as in people who once managed their pain and lived their lives, now they don't.

Instead, people I know obtain pain relief (what little they can manage) illegally because it is the only viable option left to them.

This is not hyperbole. This is their reality. Right now.

A few, blessedly, are helped by Kratom. Which is more than nothing. Sometimes a lot more.

Unfortunately, lawmakers are also learning of Kratom. I'm already hearing pols testing some fear-generating rhetoric about it. If they can inject the problem then they get to supply the solution. Which will be a ban. It's always a ban.

No matter the collateral damage.