There are definitely pill mills in the poorer parts of town. And usually poor populations receive Medicaid, which will typically pay for the stuff. Just anecdotal evidence as a pharm tech in a rough part of town during college, but after a while we had to actually stop taking scripts for most pain meds (still got a ton of people using trazadone and stuff, though) because the pharmacist just didn’t think it was worth his license if the scripts were tied back to a pill mill.

Good call. I didn’t even think to specify household vs personal. My mistake. I’ll edit to fix.

Median income is $23k in Thailand. $31k in US. It definitely doesn’t make up the difference.

Edit: Used Personal income for US and Household for Thailand. It actually doesn’t bring the gap significantly closer.