And I know people who have been effected by big pharma. Anecdotal evidence doesn't fly in the face of a journalistic documentary. There's tons of docs on the crisis and the blame is squarely on big pharma.
I'm not unaware I have been very personally affected by the opioid crisis. And I don't think the pharma companies are responsible. I haven't met a single opiate addict (and I've met far too many for one lifetime) who blames pharma companies.
Pharmaceutical companies promoted deregulation to permit advertising directly to doctors and creating quid-pro-quo situations. Pharmaceutical companies campaigned heavily for 'pain management' strategies that used 'safe' opioids. Pharmaceutical companies withhold negative trial results, generating false science. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jep.12147
These 'safe' slow-release formulations allowed Pharma to generate new IP and new revenue sources. It was never about healthcare or patient comfort, it was about money. And those addicted to opioids are paying the price.
Society refusing to draw a link between the homelessness/addition crisis in the States and the pharmaceutical companies becoming drug dealers/pushers of opioids that flooded the country is honestly shocking.
Hundreds of thousands or millions of Americans became opioid addicts because they were prescribed unnecessary pills by their own doctors, and became hooked (the risks of opioids have been known for what, thousands of years?). We have barely given the pharma industry a slap on the wrist for the harm they've caused and the direct link between the two crises is never drawn in the public sphere.
Drug companies misrepresented the research around addiction; they aggressively sold the medication to doctors and patients; they continued these sales even when they had data showing large amounts of misuse in a region.
People seem to think there can only be one point of failure, one organisation or person to blame. The opioid crisis is complex and many things failed. You're right that doctors should not have prescribed as many opioids, but that doesn't absolve the makers or the insurance companies.
Source? From what I have read the major cause of the opioid crisis is doctors prescribing opioids for pain [0]. Even 2 week prescriptions have 25% chance of creating an addict [1]. Remember originally these were marketed to doctors as non-addictive.
I believe that one of the primary causes is the overprescription of opiods by doctors in the USA, who were pressured by a patients (a generation of consumerism and instant gratification who expect doctors to provide instant treatment/remedy) on one side, and drug companies (who saw prescription painkillers as a sudden new cash cow) on the other. An article I've recently read in the Atlantic provides a perspective on this subject:
>There is no conspiracy. Just doctors over-prescribing opioids, patients lying to get them, and a few very corrupt "pain management" shops - primarily in Florida - handing them out like candy.
I would say the root problem goes far deeper. Big pharma make big politic donations which buys the ability to do this. Big pharma heavily pushed these onto Drs. Big pharma lied about the addiction potential. Big pharma fudged the facts.
I am not 100% sure of the governmental process to get moving, but their is political oversight and they have been negligent for decades, but as government bodies > big corporations seem to have a personnel revolving door, no one wants to rock the boat and lose the chance of landing a high paying job later down the line.
Many say that big Pharma corporations have a large share of the responsibility because they began promoting strong pain killers heavily, starting in the 90s [1]. Now it has become part of American culture (doctors, patients, pharmacistse etc) to treat any pain with these pain killers. It’ll cost a lot and take a long time to reverse that [2]
The opioid crisis isn't related to the war on drugs. It was caused by doctors being misinformed about how prescription opioids worked by the drug manufacturers + widely disseminated (funded) research about pain treatment. This caused people to be prescribed opioids without a risk assessment for addiction or similar, and thereby lots of people got addicted after being prescribed for broken bones, surgeries, and general discomforts.
Doctors in the US were getting kickbacks for prescribing opioids. This incentivized prescribing opioids for all types of cases that wouldn't normally need it, and led to "pill mills" flooding neighborhoods with drugs. Big pharma is behind the crisis in the US.
That wouldn't be too far from truth. 75 percent of people started their addiction from prescription medication who then turn to the black market to maintain their habit. The big pharma is loosing a large profit. They heavily opposed marijuana legalization, their role in the war on drugs is quite clear to me.
What does big Pharma have to do with it? These drugs are incredibly addictive. So addictive that normal people throw their whole lives away from one course of painkillers. Your solution is to let people get them more freely. That means more people throw their lives away
There are no statistics that show properly prescribed and taken opioids have anything to do with the crisis.
The crisis comes from illegal usage and tainted substances.
Sadly this is not clear from the statistics without digging into them, and few do.
That prescription opioids are significantly reduced, yet the death rate continues to climb indicates the focus on the current solution is in the wrong place.
No one, including me, denies "pill selling" is a problem.
However that has zero to do with the people with Chronic Pain that are doing everything within the law.
There are bad doctors, and other bad actors, they need dealt with of course. Not at the expense that need such medication.
This reads like something big pharma would write to shift the blame away from themselves for causing the opioid epidemic and killing hundreds of thousands of people.
> Although most users still get their first taste from one of several prescription pills, heroin is now the single most common individual opioid taken by people first trying this class of drugs, the study found.
Or said another way: there are so many prescription opioids on the market that lead to addiction that no single one wins.
I don't buy the idea that the opioid epidemic was some natural and inevitable consequence of the economy or stress or whatever. "Oh look, some people addicted to opioids never took prescription drugs. See, it wasn't our fault after all! Now let us go back to the good old days where we bribed doctors to prescribe our stuff to everyone."
The thing that caused the opioid crisis was doctors and Purdue pharma. Some folks are bad at handling addictive substances, and they were prescribed these things.
It's also distressing that through undergrad, medschool, residency they never learned that opioids are fucking addicting as fuck and how to think for themselves.
I mean, this opioid crisis didn't just begin this year, or last, but it's been decades in the making. So imo doctors happen to be just as part of the problem as big pharma.
Do some searching there's tons of articles/video interviews on addicts who got addicted because of pain killers. Here's one: https://www.healthline.com/health/doctor-addicted-opioids
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