They can stop most of the opioid problem by investigating the real problem and that is the prescribing physicians. When the authorities decide to get serious they will look at pain clinics, free standing doc in a boxes, hospital emergency rooms, certain MD’s , PA’s, NP’s, DO’s and DPM’s. Every state has a data bank that records each prescriber, who and what medication. They can figure out which prescriber’s are overwriting and which patient’s are receiving what pain medication. They can make arrests and pull licenses if they would like to, but they don’t speak about this problem very much at all probably because more than a few prescriber’s would be facing jail time.
This angle of investigation would be a step in the right direction.