"Addiction Rare in Patients Treated with Narcotics" is the title of a letter to the editor published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1980. Having examined records of patients treated with narcotics in a hospital setting, the authors concluded that this rarely led to addiction in patients with no history of addiction. This letter was later repeatedly misrepresented to support the idea that opioids are not addictive when prescribed for use at home. This misrepresentation has been blamed for contributing to the opioid epidemic in the United States.