Yes! That became the common wisdom: If patients are taking opioids for pain relief, they won't become addicted. Of course that article was talking about opioids given to patients in a hospital setting, not patients being sent home with bottles of them. It was taken completely out of context.

The other half of it was somehow deciding that opioids were the proper treatment for chronic pain, rather than temporary pain relief after surgery. Which was never really studied. And the consensus seems now to be that was a terrible idea.