I was working in the ER when Purdue started heavily promoting Oxycontin. The drug reps actually said it has less abuse potential because it was time released.
Doctors were prescribing it like crazy for a while, thinking it was much better than Lortab. There was a period of time, before the docs caught on, that we were seeing multiple ODs per day due to Oxycontin.
Druggies were chewing it up and getting a 12 hour dose all at once rather than the intended time release.
The FDA chastised Perdue for marketing it as being less addictive and they were forced to stop marketing it that way.
They didnt care though. By then they had made plenty of money and multitudes were addicted.