Around 2014, we became aware of organized crime taking fentanyl and putting it into counterfeit OxyContin tablets. I don't know a lot of the answers to your specific question about whether that intervention was the key one that should have been done. I do know that around that time, there was a market that was satisfied by organized crime using counterfeit OxyContin tablets, and presumably that was because there was a decreased supply of diverted pharmaceutical opioids into the illicit marketplace.
On October 4th, 2016. See this statement in context.