Most of our government is completely out to lunch on this issue. People don't abuse Rx PK's, politicians and other tin badge moralists demonize opiates.

Until they were made illegal in 1914, addiction to opiates was not a severe problem in this country.

Based on racism directed at the Chinese immigrants, the (as usual) hysterical political demagogues outlawed the Chinese drug of choice (opium) to keep drug-crazed Chinese men from raping white women.

The same thing happened with marijuana and black men supposedly driven to raping white women by weed.

Of course, the main users of opiate elixirs in 1914 were white women, but there is no evidence that they were a major social problem. Opiates became a social problem, when they became illegal and habituites had to resort to crime to support their habit. Also, raw opiates became too bulky to import, so heroin became the compact, easy, lucrative import of choice. Suddenly moderately habit-forming opiate patent medicines gave way to potently addicting heroin. And it's been a political hayride ever since. What better scapegoat than a heroin addict - hopelessly addicted, brain rewired, perfect fodder for every slimeball politician in the country.

Now using guilt by vague (opiate) association, the gov't wants to demonizing every individual treating a bad back or depression with vicodin into the same category as the evil, rapist heroin addict. Of course the small matter that impotence is a typical side-effect of opiate tolerance is lost on Ashcroft and his allies.