You'll find some doctored studies stating that opioids are not addictive, you'll find an ad campaign that claims any legislation is depriving millions of Americans their right to be free of pain, and you'll find a fuckton of money that makes its way to the campaigns and pockets of almost every single politician on Capitol Hill to effectively (and it's been extremely effective) kill any sort of meaningful legislation that could hurt their bottom lines.

You're acting like the opioid epidemic is a hot ticket issue among voters. It's really not. The average American couldn't care less about drug addicts. The average American doesn't understand nor do they care about mental illness (in this case, addiction). Every now and then an anti-Big Pharma circlejerk gets formed (RIP Pharma-bro Shkreli) before dissipating into "real" issues like abortion, guns and immigration. Every now and then an opioid story makes national news before being replaced by some other meaningless shit. Until that changes, Big Pharma doesn't really have to make grand and convincing arguments. All they need to do is put money down to make a boatload more money.