I hope this dosen't count as off topic, but Oxycontin was also marketed as a non-habit forming/life ruining alternative to morphine, very similar to how heroin was marketed a century before. Evidently the company that made oxycontin straight up lied about the drugs addictive potential in the 1990s which paved the way for the mass wave of oxycontin addiction in the 2000's.
Heroin hit the market very similarly; it was introduced in 1898 and by 1903 was recognised as super addictive. Consumer protection basically didn't exist at the time so drug manufacturers could straight up lie about a medicine containing opium, or being addictive (or whatever). The food and drug act of 1906 was indended to end that sort of thing but, you know, by than the damage was done. Just like oxycontin.
http://www.historytoday.com/ian-scott/heroin-hundred-year-habit
Question to add on to this: if the drugs really were non-addictive (at least as viewed at the time), what was the addictive alternative that they were comparing themselves to?
On the whole this appears to be what's known technically (and I am a marketing professional) as "bullshit." It wasn't that people marketing these substances knew what they were saying was untrue, more that they didn't know either way.
By the time of heroin, this sort of claim was taken with considerable skepticism by doctors. Although the Lancet reported "Heroin is said to be free from other disagreeable secondary effects of morphine, so that it may be administered ... in comparatively large doses" it also called for "a careful clinical trial." Most doctors were cautious prescribing heroin, and it was more often used orally, which was less likely to cause addiction. (Quotes from The Pursuit of Oblivion by Richard Davenport-Hines.)
The 19th century was probably the heyday of dodgy pharmacology, and gives the strongest examples as to why substances could be slow to be recognised as addictive. Here are some of the factors that contributed to this.
A serious lack of trials. Testing for addiction requires use over a medium-long period, with a variety of people. This simply wasn't done, or at least wasn't done before the drugs went on sale. The sort of drug testing and approval procedures we have now didn't exist, and those developing, selling or recommending the use of the drugs often had many conflicts of interest.
Addictiveness is not so clear cut. The propensity to become addicted will vary between people, circumstances and the length of use. It also varies between the method of use - morphine was initially used orally, which is much less addictive than intravenous use (I think because injecting gives a faster, more powerful hit).The effects of one substance aren't always easy to isolate from others (eg. if you smoke and drink, is the use of one drug simply a habit associated with an addiction to the other?). Even if you accept that a substance is addictive, there's scope for argument about whether a small dosage or a short course of treatment is. An influential doctor, seeing the effects of a substance on well-off people might come away with a very different opinion to someone who saw a substance being used by those in more difficult circumstances.
Doctors, pharmacists and drug companies could be heavily invested in these drugs, making it hard for them to change their views. Morphine is probably the best example of this. The most controversial is Freud's promotion of cocaine, which was potentially a way to make his career, which he was slow to retract, and later denied. Analgesics often require long-term use, and there aren't that many kinds, so a new and "non-addictive" one is a blessing that's difficult to reject.
In the case of morphine in particular, but also cocaine, doctors themselves were often users. Denial that a substance was addictive could also be a denial that they were or could be addicted. That said, the personal experience of doctors was a major part of changing medical opinion of morphine.
The standard of pharmacological training was very variable. Davenport-Hines describes a lecture given in 1908 and subsequently published in the Lancet, on opium and morphine habits, as "a complacent muddle of misinformation." In fact, we should probably see 'medical opinion' in this period as much more variable and decentralised than it is now. Doctors and pharmacists could form and act on their own opinions, and new findings were spread more slowly.
Addiction was seen as a moral failure; that is still a common view. That viewpoint made it difficult to study addiction; in part due to social bias on the part of anyone bothering to study it in the first place and in part due to the reluctance to admit being addicted and participate.
The idea that addiction is, or could be, a disease in itself is comparatively recent. At the time it would be very easy for anyone confronted with addition to avoid blaming the substance itself. Heroin and other powerful painkillers kill pain, complicating the picture.
Effective pain relievers were wonder-drugs. They made life-saving surgery possible. It's difficult to imagine now, but consider that a time without such things was still in human memory. Not just the common experience of being in insufferable pain - tooth extractions, broken bones, amputations and the like - but the equally common experience of seeing a loved one in distress.
There was a good deal of incentive to believe the bullshit - even if it was bullshit of your own creation.
The relief of chronic pain is still a powerful factor in this and we still have no good way to treat chronic pain without the use of drugs with addictive potential. People often confuse dependency with addiction - and they can co-exist, leading to rather complex moral debates.
It may seem "obvious," but that seeming may be somewhat deceptive, because the meaning of the word itself has shifted over time and even now differs considerably among various groups that use it, depending on their point of view.
It is important to note, however, we are finding that drugs are nowhere near as "addictive" as we take them to be.
Take Carl Hart's recent work on crack cocaine and methamphetamine addiction. He found that most of the ideas of addiction--inability to make choices when drugs are there, debilitating withdrawals--are actually false.
His research and review of the literature finds that most drug users--applicable across most drugs--are casual. About 80% use it once a month to twice a month. Of that 20% that use it more frequently, around 80% again are not addicted. They make rational decisions, defer enjoyment, go to work and have jobs, and don't ruin their lives by choosing the drug over anything else.
So just keep in mind that these drugs are depicted to be obviously addictive and we all may have ancedotes suggesting this but the research has never supported that POV but failed to reveal this. Most drug users, the super-majority, use drugs and never get addicted. If heroin was unusually addictive, we would see a much lower casual/non addictive recreational user rate but it fits right in line with weed and Coke and alcohol and so forth. The conclusion has to be either it's inherently not addictive or it works to the same degree in people susceptible to addiction. Which everything from video games to food to sex do.
If you're interested, he has quite a bit of publication on this and addiction/lack thereof with drug users.