I'm surprised that people get issued fentanyl when they are not suffering dire chronic pain and terminal. I understood it as intended as a breakthrough pain reliever in those patients that were already being given addictive analgesics in a therapeutic situation, such as terminal cancer. in those patients the addictiveness of a medicine becomes moot.
Could it be symptomatic of a privately-driven healthcare system that these substances are so, relatively, available and reduces the effectiveness of government oversight in controlling prescriptions?