In the decade leading up to 2010, sales of pain killers like Vicodin, Percocet, and OxyContin quadrupled in the United States — where five percent of the world’s population is consuming ninety-nine percent of the the narcotic found in Vicodin. The New Yorker’s Celine Gounder asks a fair question: “How did doctors, who pledge to do no harm, let the use of prescription narcotics get so out of hand?”