There are two streams. There are people who are legitimately prescribed medication for a broken ankle or a surgery or whatever, or benzodiazepines for anxiety. There are people who can use those and not become addicted. Then there are people who become addicted to the medications after they have been legitimately prescribed them. At that point they become addicted and dependent on those medications. That is when they start to lie to their doctors. That is when they start to steal or change the prescription medications, adding an extra zero to the prescription will give them extra medication. There are a million ways that they are trying to circumvent the system.
Then there are people I've talked to who've heard that there's a whole generation out there right now that has just started to use prescription medications to get high. There's a whole culture among our youth who believe it's safer to get the medication from the doctor. They're mixing it with other things, they're crushing it and shooting it, they're lying and manipulating their doctors because they've become addicted to it.
So there are the people who are just using these medications to get high, and then there is another stream of people who were legitimately prescribed the medication, became dependent upon it, and then manipulated the system.