it's a fair point. essentially what happened was just total industry deregulation.

it wasn't regulated in the way some people wanted to begin with. doctors being the sole gatekeepers and only allowing access according to clinical guidelines arrived at by legitimate scientific research. in their attempt to enforce this they ruined what controls were in place. the pill mills were hooked into the pharmaceutical supplies and therefor provided a reliable and predictable product for the consumer.

See the graph I posted in another comment that shows pretty dramatically what happened