re: To what extent is society morally obligated to save heroin addicts?

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Slow down there turbo. A LARGE portion of this blame falls directly on JCAHO and patient satisfaction based reimbursement. The rest of the blame falls on the fricking people that choose to do stupid shite.

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The first part is true, and you have a point there. But would the movement to treat all pain so aggressively or to use pain control as a metric to measure patient satisfaction have gained as much traction as it did if the manufacturers of the most popular opioids hadn't sold them as being virtually incapable of causing addiction? And does it somehow not matter that their claim was wildly untrue because it was based on shoddy or completely irrelevant "research"? That's a pretty big error to make, even when it's a honest mistake as opposed to the gross negligence displayed in this case, and they made a shite ton of money off of it. Not sure why they wouldn't or shouldn't be held accountable for that.

Also, I think finding yourself addicted after you knowingly abused an addictive substance is at least a little bit different than finding yourself addicted after you legally obtained a prescription that your doctor told you was perfectly safe.