Responding to the Opioid Crisis in North America and Beyond: Recommendations of the Stanford-Lancet Commission

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9261968/

The first wave of the opioid crisis began in the 1990s when the long-acting opioid OxyContin and other high potency opioids were employed for an extremely wide array of patients.

How are they defining the opioid crisis?

Are you taking "the whole opioid addiction crisis" literally?

As if I meant that every single opioid addiction in history is because of "regulated heroin"?

You think that's a reasonable read?

So you only meant some of it then? Why did you say whole?

People aren't mind readers. If you mean some, don't say whole and you'll probably avoid confusing people.

Because there is something that people these days commonly refer to as "the opioid crisis" (or epidemic) [1].

And overprescribed pain meds are seen as a large cause of it / aggravating factor.

So yeah, "that whole thing". It's not an unusual expression, that I know of.

1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic

It might not be unusual, but in this context it was confusing