I'll speak from my experience when I was practising, especially during the 1980s and 1990s when drugs like OxyContin were on the rise.
We, being physicians, obviously don't get our information from TV commercials. We get it from advertisements in medical journals and also from representatives of pharmaceutical companies who come to the office for the purpose of educating us about their new products. It was in that forum where the message of the safety of the product and the message of changing our practice to prescribing whatever dose it took to completely eliminate pain was made.
As was referenced, I think this was some of the issue that came out with Purdue south of the border as well. The marketing was targeted at prescribers at the office level.