You may or may not know that prescription painkiller related deaths have eclipsed motor vehicle deaths as the nation’s leading cause of “accidental” demise, but chances are you don’t know what is in the offing.
Oxycontin was released by Purdue Parma in 1995 and is a major reason that the prescription overdose rate began to spike 16 years ago and have risen exponentially since. The national death rate between 1996 and 2001 increased 5 fold, while OxyContin prescriptions increased 20 fold. The annual death toll continues to climb.
Purdue, backpedaling in a wave of public criticism, federal and multi-state legal actions finally agreed to pay out a $19.5 million to 26 states in a lawsuit in 2007. Two days later they were fined $634 million in a federal action. The settlement was reached in part due to the aggressive marketing by the company for “off label (other than FDA recommended)” usage and their failure to disclose the drugs high potential for abuse. 3 of the company’s top officers were held personally responsible to the tune of $34.5 million, which is essentially a slap on the wrist.
Interestingly enough, it wasn’t until 2010 that the company officially changed the formula to one that is more difficult to abuse. In an official statement form the company dated April 5, 2010 they say that they “elected to reformulate OxyContin® to be bioequivalent to the original formulation and in an effort to make the tablet more difficult to manipulate for the purpose of intentional misuse and abuse, however, there is no evidence that the reformulation of OxyContin is less subject to misuse, abuse, diversion, overdose or addiction.”
How noble of them to elect to change the formula after 3 more years of raking in profits in what is now a $10 billion a year legal market for opiate narcotics. That is after of course it took them 12 years to be held accountable for their product and practices in the first place. Let’s take a reasonable average of say 20,000 lives a year over the span of 15 years. That’s 300,000 lives (conservatively speaking). They paid out $634,000,000 for 300,000 lives so ultimately those who died were worth about $211 per life. $211 PER LIFE!
Furthermore, this insulting penalty came at a time when the only real study (Birnbaum, 2006) that was conducted to determine the societal costs related to prescription drug abuse had published numbers calculated to be 8.6 billion dollars in 2001 (or 9.5 billion dollars in 2005 dollars). Of this amount, 2.6 billion dollars were healthcare costs (including treatment), 1.4 billion dollars were criminal justice costs, and 4.6 billion dollars were workplace costs. So the risk (pay $211 per life extinguished by products like yours in terms of fines and another $750,000 per state to 26 states) versus the reward (make a huge chunk of profit in a $10 billion market that costs taxpayers billions more annually, and do it legally) is any corporate cost benefit analysts Mecca.
Andrew Kolodny, President of Physicians for Responsible Opiod Prescribing is quoted as saying "It's a terrific business model, and that's what these companies want to get in on." In a country that has been committed to a “War on Drugs” for at least 40 years, where we have been conditioned to demonize the “terrorists” and cartels that pump our nation full of profitable poison, why is this type of blatant exploitation, this undeniably criminal activity passed off as the cost of doing business?
But wait, there’s more…
Four companies are already in the patient testing (human trials) stage of the development of a new, even more potent drug that carries 10 times the potency of the existing painkiller known as Vicodin (this new drug is essentially pure hydrocdone). One of those companies plans to begin marketing their product, known as Zohydro, by early 2013. Zogenix, the company responsible for Zohydro, says there is not enough evidence to support that taking steps to make the drug more tamper proof would mitigate instances of abuse. In other words, they’ll take their chances with people’s lives in order to ensure the highest level of profitability.
The DEA and the Federal government have sat back to date and allowed a legal loophole dating back to 1970 to be exploited at the expense of the pain relief patient and taxpayer alike. Why do you suppose that is? Who is really profiting from the sales of these powerful painkillers and at what cost? How can this be allowed to happen? Why is no one asking these questions? Pain patient and taxpayer alike, prepare for another round of death, addiction and cost unlike what you have seen to date.
The opiate drug manufacturers have taken notice and lessons from the likes of Pablo Escobar and El Chapo Guzman, WITH ONE KEY EXCEPTION; they have found a way to profit from drug sales LEGALLY. They use lobbyist, wealth, and influence to create and control the laws that regulate their industry and exploit loopholes in the foundations of the establishment that is meant to protect the American people from falling victim to such practices. Instead of using drug mules and a distribution network of smugglers, traffickers and dealers, they use the FDA and every doctor and pharmacist on every street in every town America. It is the ideal market, with the ideal product. A product that once used could require the consumer to use it as often as they can until they are sucked dry of their dollars, and in many cases, their very lives.
If you aren’t outraged, you aren’t paying attention.
Please don’t forget about PA House Bill 1651. Your voice needs to be heard.
Reference sites:
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/0509biz-oxycontin0509.html
http://www.drugs.com/answers/purdue-pharma-official-statement-re-new-op-323421.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/17/local/la-me-drugs-epidemic-20110918
http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/pubs/RXReport_web-a.pdf
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread19448.html
http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/WDR2011/The_opium-heroin_market.pdf
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