Agree. The opiod epidemic is just the latest moral panic used to justify limitng people's rights.if you want to o.d., that's your right and your fault. OTC pain medication useless for serious chronic pain and a bigger ripoff than prescription drug companies. Opiods are safe when taken under doc guidelines. This notion that otc drugs are safe is wrong too: Otc drugs are known to cause liver and kidney problems too.

I agree with a bunch of your point, but I want to contest one thing - opioids are not necessarily safe by following your doctor's guidelines.

There's not (as far as I've found) currently any consistent threshold for how much of a given opioid you have to take for how long to develop an addiction. Some people might be able to take a high dose for an extended interval and not blink. Some people might take a much lower dose and have a very bad time indeed. (For that matter, I've known some people who got IV opioids with no effect. Biochemistry is wild.)

So I don't think it's reasonable to argue "opioids are safe if you follow the guidelines" and "OTC pain meds are unsafe [if you ignore the guidelines]" - both have risks that you can try to mitigate by following the guidelines given, but unknown factors can result in it still having negative outcomes.

I think it depends on your location and situation.

A couple months ago, I had minor (in absolute terms) surgery which resulted in a good deal of pain; the doctor asked if I wanted a prescription for opioids, I said yes, it was sent in, no further questions.

Am I saying people in chronic pain don't now have issues? No, I have no direct experience with that situation.

But it's still quite possible for people to get opioids sometimes.