"Republican Christians have no problem taking opioids or being prescribed them. These same people think pot is a dangerous drug and legalization would result is mass crime and deaths. All studies show there is a major opioid crisis and to no ones surprise the government isn’t doing anything to help. Instead more powerful opioids have been approved."
I'm not really sure what all of this means, but of course people are fine taking medications prescribed by their doctors. When people are prescribed opioids and use them as prescribed, they rarely become addicted or move on to abuse of illegal opioids (whether diverted prescription pills or street drugs like heroin). To say the government isn't doing anything about opioids is also awfully ignorant. There have been lawsuits by AGs, pill limits imposed, dosage limits imposed, bills introduced to make Oxycontin a Schedule I drug, physician education mandates, huge increases in funding to address the opioid crisis, huge increases in funding for prescription monitoring programs, prescription monitoring program mandates, DEA limits on manufacturing, and more. A large omnibus of opioid bills was passed by Congress and signed into law last year by the president. Some of these policies will hurt patients who need pain medication, but such is the actual attitude of most legislators and administrators in government.
So things are nearly the opposite of what you suggest when it comes to opioids. And yet overdoses have continued to rise. Maybe that's because the problem was more about people abusing drugs than it was about doctors prescribing opioids.
