President Trump has made it clear that addressing the opioid crisis in the USA is a hight priority for his administration.
February 27, 2018 Attorney General Sessions Announces New Federal Opioids Taskforce
"The "Prescription Interdiction & Litigation Task Force" will team civil and criminal law enforcement officials in an effort to focus on how opioid manufacturers and distributors contribute to the opioid crisis."
This is just one of many. Attorneys General in state after state have begun filing suit againt Perdue. The trend started last year. Yet it's been known for a long, long time that the company's marketing tactics were problematic and killing people.
This 2002 book cites the DEA's concerns about the company's "overly aggressive" marketing of this dangerous, highly addictive and frequently lethal drug.
But nobody did anything to stop it and the problem got worse.
In 2004, just before West Virginia’s suit against Purdue (filed in 2001) accusing it of “coercive and deceptive practices” went before a judge, then corporate lawyer Eric Holder negotiated a settlement in which the firm paid the state a paltry $10 million and admitted no wrongdoing.
In 2007, Virginia’s U.S. Attorney John Brownlee won a guilty plea from three Purdue executives and fines totaling $669 million. Brownlee accused the firm of fraudulent marketing of OxyContin that resulted in scores of deaths. Purdue’s defenders included Mary Jo White, later appointed to head the Securities and Exchange Commission by President Barack Obama, and Rudolph Giuliani, then partner in a Houston law firm that specialized, appropriately, in defending energy companies accused of polluting.
White and Giuliani succeeded in getting a dozen charges against Purdue dropped, including Medicaid fraud and unjust enrichment. But later U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s earlier work in West Virginia did more to keep opioids flowing because the negotiated settlement prevented a trial and sealed a mass of documents related to the firm’s criminal activities.
Many of those documents were relevant to the suit Kentucky filed, instead of accepting $500,000 as part of the Virginia case. In December 2015, Attorney General Jack Conway settled with Purdue for $24 million. Conway agreed to destroy the state’s copies of those documents that revealed extensive criminal behavior by Purdue.
>Big Pharma, the drug manufacturers and their agencies, in the past decade, spent over $900 million to lobby against laws that would limit access to opioids such as Oxy, Vicodin and fentanyl. The money was often laundered through the American Cancer Society. Big Pharma’s campaign spending paid off with congressional Republicans and Democrats passing the oxymoronic Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act that gutted the Drug Enforcement Administration’s ability to act against manufacturers and distributors committing crimes.
Evan Rivera
Because of a bunch of fucking drug addicts and an imaginary opioid epidemic, they gave me tramadol twice now. Once after a surgery, and once after I wiped out on my bike and broke a bunch of shit. I always got percocet or at least tylenol 4-5, but now they all pretend i'm a drug addict even though I don't even drink just because they don't want to give me pills that work for pain. Tramadol doesn't help with anything, plus it irritated my ulcer and made me throw up. Fucking idiots.
Big pharma and doctors can rim my asshole after I binge eat expired taco bell
Brandon Sullivan
Bump for interesting thread. Trump going after predatory pharmaceutical companies is historically praiseworthy. Everyone in the damn nation agrees that it’s been horrifically destructive.
Ayden Wright
>an imaginary opioid epidemic 64,000 deaths last year isn't imaginary.
>eats at taco hell >blames tramadol for his gut problem
Luis Lee
The law, passed April 2016, "makes it virtually impossible for the DEA to freeze suspicious narcotic shipments from the companies, according to internal agency and Justice Department documents and an independent assessment by the DEA’s chief administrative law judge..."
A 2011 survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that Americans aged 19-64 were prescribed an average of 11.9 prescriptions, and Americans 65 and up received an average of 28 prescriptions. The United States makes up only 5 percent of the world’s population but consumes 80 percent of the painkillers in the world.
Patient requests for specific drugs have major impact on prescribing, reports study, March 14, 2014. There was a time when it was forbidden to advertise prescription medicines on TV in the US. We should return to that.
Austin Wood
See "learned intermediary" doctrine.
Leo Bennett
What are secular, rational arguments for allowing pharmaceuticals to advertise on television? I want a Devil’s Advocate.
Jaxon Collins
142 fatal overdoses a day >Overdoses killed more people in the US in 2015 than car crashes and gun deaths combined.
Where's the teenagers crying for big pharma to quit killing their moms and dads and friends? We know they're out there. We know some of them personally in our communities. CNN? Bueller?
Drug companies themselves argue against it, implicitly, when using the "learned intermediary" doctrine in liability litigation. Summarized: "Oh it's ok we committed deceptive trade practices by fraudulently marketing to you on TV. Your doctor should have known better."
Isaiah Gray
The United States and New Zealand are the only countries in the world that allow direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals.
Good God that’s retarded. Bullshit like this is why I’m NatSoc and not AnCap.
Tyler Rogers
How does the FDA factor into AnCap?
Easton Peterson
When asked about the Democrats putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to challenging drug industry collusion, a lobbyist cozy with the DNC states: "I really haven't noticed it."
>Love him or hate him, Donald Trump is right: These people are all talk and no action. Except that they now pander to their true masters, multinational corporations pushing a globalist agenda, in full view of everyone, and with absolutely no shame or conscience. These are dark and evil days, folks.
When asked during the Democratic presidential debate what enemies she was most proud to have made, Hillary Clinton named pharmaceutical and health insurance companies at the top of her list. But that hasn’t stopped the Democratic front-runner from accepting millions of dollars in campaign cash from both industries in the course of her political career, financial disclosure records show.
2/13/17 The Story Of The Suicide Of A Powerful Lobbyist Threatens To Rock K Street >The death of a pioneer in black arts lobbying has Washington operatives pointing fingers and lawyering up. The Wall Street Journal’s Brody Mullins published an expose into what it describes as an affair that is “shaping up to be one of the biggest U.S. investigations into Washington’s influence business since the bribery and corruption case surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff rocked the nation’s capital in the mid-2000s.” >spending irregularities coming out of the Washington office an unusually high amount of spending on Washington consultants > questions about illicit payments in exchange for doling out contracts where was the money going?
Yet, more poppy fields in production than ever before meaning more opiats entering USA than ever before. More military in Afghanistan, guarding said poppy fields. Yes, he cares.
Aaron Price
Are you a police officer that goes by the name of MagDaddy and used to play Company of Heroes?
Tyler Nelson
Fair point. >U.S. troops only target drug-producing facilities. >"We are not going after the farmers that are growing the poppy"
About halfway through this now. Great explanation of what went wrong with letting these greedy fucks market this to everyone for everything.
Jaxon Taylor
Look for info on Sacklers >Find some meeting they were involved in of the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies >Look that up, find this article
Former Norton CEO and Symantec board member admits having sex with teenagers; Did Hillary Clinton help him get immunity?
