Robert Gebelhoff: Complicity a big factor in America’s opioid crisis

Denton Record Chronical ^ | 12/22/2017 | Robert Gebelhoff

[mabarker1]

For years, the opioid crisis was described as one of negligence. In this narrative, doctors overprescribed pills that shouldn't have gone to patients and pharmaceutical companies overzealously promoted medications while playing down the risks.

Robert Gebelhoff

But new reporting demonstrates how this version, as worrying as it sounds, might understate the role of drugmakers in the opioid crisis.

The Washington Post and 60 Minutes reported that some of the Drug Enforcement Administration's most experienced investigators believed criminal charges were warranted against one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, alleging that the company, McKesson Corp., did little to prevent huge quantities of addictive opioid medications from being diverted to illegal use by pharmacies that were, in some cases, knowingly supplying illegal drug rings.

In other words, this isn't just a story of simple negligence; it's a story about whether drug manufacturers and distributors turned a willfully blind eye toward illegal drug trafficking.

Defenders of opioid painkillers often argue that these medications are essential to people with chronic pain and that the vast majority of opioid prescriptions do not result in addiction or abuse. Instead, they contend, the prescription drug crisis is a myth and the real problems are more powerful, nonmedicinal opioids such as heroin and fentanyl, which account for the lion's share of overdoses in the country.

But to focus only on these facts lets drug producers off the hook.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse has found that nearly 80 percent of all heroin users in the United States started with prescription opioids. Some of these people began using opioids through pain treatments; others became addicted as millions of pills starting pouring into pharmacies and ended up in black markets.

The Post's investigation illustrates a distribution system in which pharmacies, drug manufacturers and even --

[HLPhat]

>>the opiate addiction cycle

One solution would be to give them as much scrip as their appetite desires - along with an expedient Darwin Award.

Problem with that is there’s nothing preventing them from turning around and selling any excess on the street.

That would be especially likely among a demographic who think they’re entitled to game the SSDI system... and to hell with everybody else who doesn’t have their “legitimate” need.

[jenaliaanderson]

Oh my god!!!