>>...deaths from opioid abuse and overdose...

Most of those deaths are not from abuse per se but are accidental fentanyl *poisonings*.
Consider someone dependent on opiods, whether dependent from pain, denied sufficient care and forced into using street drugs or 'recreational' users. Once they have a physiological dependence they have no choice between taking and not taking. Enter fentanyl, a synthetic (meaning a chemist in a garage can produce it from precursors) opiod. It's cheap to make, much more difficult to control, and powerful that just two miligrams* of it is usually fatal (suppression of respiratory reflex).
And it's not just street drugs that come as a powder. There are conterfeit pills that are also made with fentanyl - so even if you think what you're taking is from what a kid raided from his grandma's medicine cabinet, you could be wrong.
I don't think drug dealers are trying to kill their customers it's just that they don't have pharmacological-level tools to ensure a safe dose - and they're working in bulk. The only positive on the horizon is that I am seeing reports of a less-potent version of fentanyl (also synthetic). Maybe there'll be fewer poisonings.

Oh, for anyone feeling superior to those unfortunates who have to use opiods, consider generic drugs. Go read Katherine Eban's "Bottle of Lies" and tell me you're perfectly safe, that generics are exactly the same as name-brand.

*for comparison, 2mg is one two-thousandth of a level (not heaped) teaspoon of sugar. Next time you're putting some in your coffee or tea (if you do that) consider how large a thousandth of that might be. Two of those and you're dead.