Posted on 09/27/2016 4:28:52 AM PDT by Wolfie
Big pharma is spending millions to fight limits on opioids like OxyContin, Vicodin and fentanyl
The pharmaceutical industry has spent more than $880 million over the past decade to fight laws that would limit the availability of powerful opiods such as OxyContin, Vicodin and fentanyl in the United States, according to an investigation by the Associated Press and the Center for Public Integrity published Sunday.
Often, these lobbying expenditures are funneled through groups like the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network and other advocacy groups that represent the interests of patients with terminal cancer or chronic pain, whose conditions can be alleviated by taking opioids.
While opioids are critical for cancer patients and those in terminal pain, opioid abuse, including heroin and prescription drugs has been called the worst drug epidemic in American history. The numbers of overdose deaths have been rising in tandem with the booming sales of the drugs. On an average day in the United States, roughly 129 people die from an opioid-related overdoses, according to White House.
Big pharma spending on political contributions and lobbying has been targeted on limits being placed on prescribing opioids by doctors. To put the numbers into context, AP and the Center of Public Integrity found the pharmaceutical industry had spent eight times more than the gun lobby during that same period, from 2006 to 2015.
Lawmakers interviewed for the story attributed the failure of bills that they had pushed to stem the flow of opioids, to the aggressive lobbyists working on behalf of those pharmaceutical companies.
Some companies have already been forced to acknowledge their role in the current crisis. Purdue Pharma, for example, the maker of OxyContin, pleaded guilty in 2007 to charges that it misrepresented the drug as "abuse resistant" as part of its multimillion dollar marketing campaign. Purdue was forced to pay a hefty $600 million in fines.
I can tell neither you nor any of your loved ones suffer chronic pain. Pray you stay that way
I don’t know why the DEA is going to penalize innocent people in pain for a bunch of stoners.
Robberies and assaults are the result of addiction, period. The fact that they have cracked down on pharmaceutical opioids means that the illegal opioids become even more expensive due to diminishing supply. The demand has not been reduced at all. Thus a reduction in supply has created higher prices and increased the need to commit more assaults & robberies to satisfy those higher prices. Usage in its self is a real problem and reducing supply only exacerbates the crime problem.
I think I remember the mass murder you are speaking of. It involved a farm house and a lot of family members being killed execution style or something along those lines. It occurred sometime within this calendar year. Did they ever arrest anyone in connection with that crime? I ask because I was wondering if the crime was perpetrated by addicts or rival suppliers fighting for control of the marketplace.
Bottom line here is that illegal usage is the real issue, and the source is only the facilitator of that usage. Without usage the sources would have no marketplace and would move on to where that marketplace existed.
And that's going to get a lot worse.
Most states have investigative bodies now which focus specifically on doctors and their prescriptions.
If you're like most people, you would think that catching guys who write 500 oxycodone prescriptions a day would be easy - and it IS easy.
But look at it from the point of view of a career bureaucrat. If you catch that guy, you're sentencing yourself to months of red tape, scads of paperwork, a trial appearance that keeps getting moved around, and a boss who wonders why you aren't as productive as Johnson over there, who "caught" twenty doctors who misspelled something on a form or who failed to document the right ICD-10 code for chronic pain while you were f***ing around with this one stupid case.
"Enforcement" of Medicaid fraud has the same problem. ANYBODY can catch the bad guys - everyone knows who they are. BUT, there are only a few of them, their cases are big and complicated, and the key to your future as a lawman is quantity, not quality.
So, sorry to say, all chronic pain patients are collateral damage in the current response to the "opioid crisis".
>>And you want to talk about the pain meds for end stage cancer only high doses of Morphine is going to work there. And Hospice is well known of ODing patients to get rid of them faster. They did my dad it stopped his heart, it was not the end stage lung cancer found to late that killed him but their ODing him.
The most depressing sight in the world is an end-stage cancer patient pressing that button to get more pain meds, but the timer for the next dose is still 5 minutes away because some “drug protocol” says that this is all he can have. Hospice didn’t kill your dad. Lung cancer killed him.
The link to your story is broken.
cronyism?
Friend took hydrocodone for years for chronic pain (neck and back surgeries). It was cheap and allowed him some control over dosage in that he could cut back when he felt okay. In fact, he had worked out a routine that allowed him to function relatively well on 25% of the allowable dose. Then Florida changed the law regarding prescribing opiates because of abuse and negative publicity. Subsequently he was taken off hydrocodone. Since then he has been through multiple more expensive drugs, physical therapy, trigger point injections, nerve ablations, epidurals, and even Botox injections. A lot of pain, expense and wasted effort because suddenly he couldn’t be trusted to take a pill. Perhaps this is why our medical costs are sky high in that we ignore the older and cheaper remedies that work.
This was not locals murdering each other this was cartel level stuff.
And it's all OK because the LEO's got to confiscate all the property and chattels. Finding the murderers is secondary to the Drug Enforcement Cartel.
The thing is until RxDrugs hit this area the most problems we ever had was weed and there was little hard core crime due to weed.
RXDrugs literally trashed our county and many counties around us. Never had such problems until then.
meanwhile
"According to the Guttmacher Institute, there were 1.21 million abortions performed in the United States in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available. This amounts to 3,322 abortions per day."
also
"Purdue Pharma, for example, the maker of OxyContin, pleaded guilty in 2007 to charges that it misrepresented the drug as "abuse resistant"...
they did this by adding so much acetaminophen that folks died of liver failure before they could abuse the drug
“”What about the severe alcoholic that is drinking themselves to death? “”
I’ve helped several recover from alcoholism, if I can be of assistance please feel free to PM me.
I have a ruptured disc in my lower back and have suffered intermittently many times during the last 20 years. I also remain without an anterior cruciate ligament in my left knee for about 40 years. I have refused to take the hard drugs and take the OTC medications. I view pain as part of getting old and do all I can to remain mobile. I follow the label explicitly to avoid the adverse effects and cease taking them as soon as I can stand it. This is me. I have no problem with others that want to take the narcotics, but I will not addict myself to anything.
____________________________________________________________________
Overdose deaths involving prescription opioids have quadrupled since 1999, and so have sales of these prescription drugs. From 1999 to 2014, more than 165,000 people have died in the U.S. from overdoses related to prescription opioids.
Opioid prescribing continues to fuel the epidemic. Today, at least half of all U.S. opioid overdose deaths involve a prescription opioid. In 2014, more than 14,000 people died from overdoses involving prescription opioids.
https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/index.html
Most people do not realize that alcohol is the only drug, and it is a drug, that may cause a severe addict to die if denied access to their drug of choice. Because that denial causes such a traumatic shock to the system the body shuts down completely. No other drug will kill the addict if they are denied access and forced to cold turkey from their habit.
Alcohol also is very destructive to internal organs over prolonged usage. They cause the same exact problems as illegal drug usage does. Issues within the family structure, as well as, costs to society as a whole, in terms of medical issues they create and criminal activity that occur from its usage, such as rape, murder and even accidental death.
As with anything we introduce into our body, it is always the excess that creates the problems. In limited usage the negative affects are lessened by the degree of consumption. Limited to a certain level it may even provide a degree of benefit, over indulgence is when the problems start to arise.
Of course, anybody opposed is a crony. I am actually a retired research DVM with some expertise in public health. I still maintain a license but I sell drugs only to friends and family at cost. Some people always assume the worst in others. I do have 5 MDs in my family, does that make me a crony?
“My SIL has the same back problem I have. Funny, her Dr prescribed real pain killers for her 5 years ago, me, “take 2 aspirin and deal with it” is what I get.”
The pain in my shoulders and hands can be unbearable at times. I cannot sleep because I cannot turn over without screaming. I told my American doctor about it and he recommended a pain management specialist. My Brazilian doctor gave me 120 vicodin and said if I wanted more I will need to come back and give a urine specimen to show I am not selling the drug.
If anything, in the US we don’t use opioids ENOUGH to relieve pain. They should be easier to prescribe.
“While opioids are critical for cancer patients and those in terminal pain, opioid abuse, including heroin and prescription drugs has been called the worst drug epidemic in American history.”
Who do I care more about, a cancer patient, or some stoned idiot? Gosh that tough.
At the same time they fight to keep marijuana listed a Schedule 1 narcotic. Sad.
Exactly. The fact that there are some irresponsible people (statistically a very small percentage) shouldn't mean that the others, who really need the relief, should be treated like criminals and be unable to get their medicine.
It's not up to me or the DEA to dictate other peoples' quality of life. Being in chronic pain can a depressing Hell from which there is no escape, and unfortunately, there are many unethical doctors and pharmacists who take advantage of the situation the DEA has created, and who engage in price gouging.
The way the whole system works is absolutely shameful, and it saddens me that so many nanny-state big government conservatives are OK with that. As long as they get to indulge their self-righteous authoritarian impulses, all's right with the world...
Vote Trump!
I expect a chunk of them make their living directly or indirectly from the War on Drugs.
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