Yes! I agree this has been way more than a failure of sciene, it has been a public policy failure and failure around letting opiods wreak havoc.
@allison5, and anyone else interested on the systemic failure here, I highly recommends this previous article we reviewed. It is one of my favorite articles to ever cover!
Link to article: Providing chronic pain management in the "Fifth Vital Sign" Era: Historical and treatment perspectives on a modern-day medical dilemma - PubMed
(Also, @irvin this is the article I told you about!)