Posted on 10/25/2019 7:31:00 AM PDT by Red Badger
Earlier this week a drugmaker made a plea deal with two counties in Ohio who had sued demanding compensation for the costs of dealing with the opioid epidemic.
McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health Inc., AmerisourceBergen Corp. and Israel-based drugmaker Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. will pay a total of $215 million under terms of the deal, said Hunter Shkolnik, who represents Cuyahoga County. Teva would contribute $20 million in cash and $25 million worth of Suboxone, used to treat opioid addiction…
The Ohio case had been set to be the first federal trial related to an opioid epidemic that has claimed an estimated 400,000 American lives over two decades. Cuyahoga and Summit counties sued Teva, the distributors and Walgreens, claiming their practices contributed to the epidemic.
The Ohio case seems to reinforce an idea I’ve also seen pop up on television shows, i.e. Americans get addicted to prescription pills and later die as a result of the addiction made possible by the greed of drugmakers. There definitely are some people dying from prescription pills, but a new study in Massachusetts found it’s much less common than you might imagine. From Reason:
Alexander Walley, an associate professor of medicine at Boston University, and five other researchers looked at nearly 3,000 opioid-related deaths with complete toxicology reports from 2013 through 2015. “In Massachusetts, prescribed opioids do not appear to be the major proximal cause of opioid-related overdose deaths,” Walley et al. write in the journal Public Health Reports. “Prescription opioids were detected in postmortem toxicology reports of fewer than half of the decedents; when opioids were prescribed at the time of death, they were commonly not detected in postmortem toxicology reports….The major proximal contributors to opioid-related overdose deaths in Massachusetts during the study period were illicitly made fentanyl and heroin.”
The study confirms that the link between opioid prescriptions and opioid-related deaths is far less straightforward than it is usually portrayed. “Commonly the medication that people are prescribed is not the one that’s present when they die,” Walley told Pain News Network. “And vice versa: The people who died with a prescription opioid like oxycodone in their toxicology screen often don’t have a prescription for it.”
When I read this my first thought was that perhaps people are getting addicted to the prescription pills and then switching to the illegal drugs once they can’t get the prescription pills any longer. Reason’s Jacob Sullum wrote about that assumption back in August:
A 2018 BMJ analysis of medical records found evidence of “opioid misuse” in 1 percent of patients who took pain pills after surgery. While studies find that misuse is more common among chronic pain patients, a 2016 New England Journal of Medicine article concluded that “rates of carefully diagnosed addiction” average less than 8 percent.
That study, which was co-authored by Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, noted that “addiction occurs in only a small percentage of persons who are exposed to opioids—even among those with preexisting vulnerabilities.”
The opioid crisis is real and is killing far too many Americans, but it isn’t being driven by people who get hurt, get addicted, and wind up overdosing. Perhaps that story is more satisfying in a sense because it creates a clear villain: The drug companies profiting from the drug abuse. This study seems like compelling evidence that the real crisis is more complicated than the one that is often presented to the public.
This is a fake argument.
Many in this new generation of addicts were using prescription meds until their prescriptions were were cut off. For years they were so easy to get. Some people just can’t cope with the power of the new Opioids.
Then, they started using the street drugs. The street drugs killed them.
No, but they got addicted to opioids using prescription drugs that Cardinal and the Sacklers said could not lead to addiction.
I have been very surprised at the recent transition in how News covers this stuff. Once upon a time, shady drug dealers sold drugs that had been smuggled in from foreign lands. Then, all of a sudden, the News tells me that the problem is my Doctor, and the big, evil pharmaceutical houses that greedily try to addict as many people as possible.
Personally, I think the shady drug dealers and smugglers are more likely culprits.
You can’t sue and blackmail Mexican Drug Cartels like you can “BIG PHARMA”
**************
Exactly, and the fine money will become fungible, allowing it to be shifted around “for other purposes”.
Exactly!
I have a good friend who ruined her life exactly this way.
Got in a car accident, was given pain killers for it.
Ended up searching the web for fake prescription vendors when the real prescription ended.
Eventually she started to fight to get her life back after she burned nearly all her friends and family.
I’m not sure yet if she is going to make it.
Most people who overdose on opioids aren’t using prescription drugs.
Your statement:
The street drugs killed them.
You made the argument...how is it fake?
Most people on prescribed opioids are monitored pretty damned close.
Nearly all (of course there are exceptions) pain management programs that use opioids have irregular testing, clauses for immediate termination for illicit use and do pill counts.
You are correct in your assertion that prescription cutoff lead to street drugs to replace prescribed drugs, which of course means dubious quality, ease of overdose, etc.
So, conclusion...street drugs killed them, not prescribed drugs.
And although I agree, and I find it despicable, that drug companies pushed their product to any and all, it is a legal product and it has a legitimate use.
It is not a long-term solution to pain issues and in those with mental weakness, yes, it does lead to a big problem.
But, even with the unconscionable advertising tactics of the Big Pharma, I still cannot hold them responsible for the rampant illicit drug availability in this country.
No, but they got addicted to opioids using prescription drugs that Cardinal and the Sacklers said could not lead to addiction.
*************
Skeptical that they were dumb enough to claim that nobody could get addicted even if they exceeded prescribed dosages. You’d have to live on another planet to believe something like that for any powerful painkiller. If they were actually that dumb, you have my appology.
Maybe. But I suspect that the huge PR push about opioids has more to do with replicating the “success” of the tobacco lawsuits, which put hundreds of millions of dollars into government hands.
‘’Most people on prescribed drugs are monitored pretty damned close’
Absolutely! My older ‘still a hippie’ brother was a druggie for a lot of his adult life. He now has severe pain after several lower back and neck ops. He is monitored very closely to make sure he isn’t self medicating with street drugs. And my sister-in-law grows her own marijuana...legal where they live.
The fatal dose may not have been a legal dose. But I want to know what the first dose was. Because the first dose created the addict. The final dose merely stopped the long nightmare.
When doctors stop the pain with a highly addictive drug. Then withhold that drug. Of course they often create an addict, who does anything to get more drugs. The addict tries other legal or semi-legal means like faking pain and shopping for other doctors. But eventually many find illegal sources. These sources become available as they go to AA meetings, jail or hospitals and learn where to get illegal drugs.
Just because your prescription ends, your affinity for Opioids doesn’t.
Carefully monitored my ass.
Another story you will rarely see reported because it doesn’t fit the narrative du jour. Garden variety addicts are selecting opiods as their drug of choice. It shouldn’t be a surprise when they OD on them.
Exactly, you get hooked on a prescription, then the prescription is ended or halted then you go on the street to get your fix
NONSENSE ARGUMENT...
Propaganda by big pharma to cover their asses...
There is ZERO difference between what they have done in the US, and what Japan did to China...
These people should be impaled and their bodies left for the carrion
You wont’ see it because its a nonsense and GARBAGE argument.
You get prescribed opioids and get addicted, the prescription runs out, or gets cut off and then you go to the streets to get it...
This story doesn’t absolve big pharma of anything... its a garbage argument that the drug companies have no culpability for this.
Almost everyone knows some people.
How the deadly drug fentanyl is making its way to the US
The World, PRI’s The World
July 19, 2019 · 12:15 PM EDT
Bags of white powdery fentanyl on a table. Plastic bags of fentanyl are displayed on a table at the US Customs and Border Protection area. Credit: Joshua Lott/Reuters
Trump administration officials are divided over part of a proposal to crack down on illicit versions of fentanyl, the deadly synthetic painkiller that President Donald Trump targeted in declaring a national opioid abuse emergency.
In an inter-agency dispute that highlights the challenges of curbing opioid abuse, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is publicly backing tighter rules for fentanyl analogs, which are slightly altered copycat versions of the powerful drug fueling an explosion in overdoses.
In this case, the bill would cut the Food and Drug Administration out of the time-consuming review process by letting the DEA permanently classify illicit fentanyl analogs as Schedule I drugs, like heroin, which are deemed to be addictive with no medical use.
The DEA says these legal changes would help prosecutors keep pace with criminals who constantly churn out chemically tweaked fentanyl analogs to evade strict Schedule I regulations.
Of 70,200 US drug overdose deaths in 2017, according to the CDC, about 41% involved synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl and illicit analogs of it. Most of them are made in China.
Fentanyl, some versions of which are approved to treat cancer pain, is 100 times more potent than morphine.
The World’s Marco Werman spoke with Scott Stewart, an expert on terrorism and security issues with Stratfor, a global intelligence consulting firm. Before joining Stratfor, he was a special agent with the State Department for 10 years and involved in hundreds of terrorism investigations.
Stewart explained the global supply chain that brings fentanyl to the US.
Marco Werman: Fentanyl is such a dangerous and fatal piece of the opioid crisis here in the US. Right now, as of July 2019, where’s it coming from, which countries?
Scott Stewart: We’re seeing some fentanyl sent directly from China to the US, primarily in the flow of commerce, stuff that’s coming in that’s being purchased on the dark web. In this dynamic, we’ll have fairly pure fentanyl sent by mail to dealers who will then cut it into either fake narcotic pills or they will cut it into fake heroin. Then also we have organized crime groups that are trafficking it into the country through Mexico and then we also see some of it coming in through Canada from Asian organized crime groups.
With fentanyl coming to the US via Mexico, what’s happening to it in Mexico before it gets brought into the US?
Well, we’re kind of seeing two sources there. Some of it is coming in directly from China that’s already made and manufactured, but then we’re also seeing the precursor chemicals come into Mexico and then the Mexican cartels are synthesizing fentanyl in their labs.
It’s actually an easier drug to synthesize than methamphetamine. So, these Mexican super labs are pretty well-positioned, both in terms of their supply chain to China but also their ability to synthesize the drug due to their experience in the methamphetamine trade.
A 2018 BMJ analysis of medical records found evidence of “opioid misuse” in 1 percent of patients who took pain pills after surgery. While studies find that misuse is more common among chronic pain patients, a 2016 New England Journal of Medicine article concluded that “rates of carefully diagnosed addiction” average less than 8 percent..."
Two points.
The quote he provides doesn't address the premise that many fatal addictions begin with prescribed meds; and
An 8% addiction rate is huge.
This will happen more and more now that the “NARCAN” crutch is so widely available.
Many police officers have it, all EMTs have it, even dopers carry it (so a friend can administer it if needed).
The problem is that when a drug addict overdoses (opioids), and then is revived by NARCAN, they don’t have ANY idea that they had just died! They have no memory of the event (they were unconscious). One moment they are clinically DEAD, the next they are wide awake and no longer high.
“Drugs? What drugs? Hospital? What for? I feel fine.”
It’s like that water damage company slogan “Like It Never Even Happened”.
So they learn NOTHING from the experience. Only to do it again tomorrow or the next day, or the next.
The very first “pill mill” operation which became the model for the others that followed was established in Portsmouth, Ohio by a Canadian doctor who was eventually sent to prison and then deported. The heroin marketers followed everywhere these pill mills were set up with products which were 1/3 of the price peddled to people who were already addicted. Medicaid funded a large portion of the creation of this epidemic, too.
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