In the 1980's, there was a panic involving child kidnapping. If you didn't live through it, it is difficult to understate how ridiculous it was. Children's faces were being printed on milk cartoons. TV stations were running reports at half-hour intervals. This panic was driven by lazy and uncurious news reporting and by statistics that included domestic disputes into reports of "kidnapping." Today, we have the same issue with opioids. The Federalist  has published a superb article pertaining to the conflation of prescription pain medications with the deaths being caused by the abuse of illegal  opioids, primarily fentanyl. From the article: Although opioid-related deaths are driven mainly by heroin and black-market fentanyl, you would not know that from most of the  press coverage , which  emphasizes pain medication  prescribed to patients who become addicted, overdose, and die. This narrative is “fake news.” Just 30 percent of opioid-related deaths...