The Washington Post had a piece on a new study finding a correlation between opioid overdoses and the money spent by drug companies marketing opioids to doctors. Of course, no one would spend large amounts of money promoting a drug without the huge profit margins they enjoy as a result of government-granted patent monopolies.

It is standard practice for pharmaceutical companies to push their drugs in contexts where they may be appropriate. The spread of opioids is simply an extreme case. Without the patent monopoly, this incentive disappears.