No matter how you look at it, there have been terrible, unintended outcomes from the introduction and marketing of next-generation prescription opioids. Since 1999, three years after OxyContin was unveiled by Purdue Pharmaceuticals, the rate of drug overdoses in the U.S. has quadrupled, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Nearly half a million people have died, a number driven mainly by prescription opioid overdoses In 2014, more people died in the U.S. from drug overdoses than in any year on record at the agency, and at least half of those deaths were caused by prescription opioids.