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How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

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Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#111

Post by refurb »

sacred_numbers wrote: post #76
pradn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do doctors get paid more for prescribing one brand of medication vs another?

Not typically in money, but in gifts, lunches, and attention paid by young, attractive pharmaceutical sales people. For opioids, specifically, there is also the factor that doctors prescribing opioids will have higher customer satisfaction in the short term because opioids are better than almost anything for pain relief. Higher customer satisfaction (not necessarily the same as better patient outcomes) usually means…

Gifts from pharma hasn’t been true for a couple decades. They don’t even give pens now. Sure they can get a free lunch, but it’s usually brought to their office and it’s fast food.

Customer satisfaction is relevant, but only because hospitals have put so much emphasis on it.

But regardless, nobody can get these drugs without a doctor writing a script, so there is plenty of blame to go around.

Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#112

Post by mschuster91 »

I totally get and support that said profits should be seized by the government and distributed to help affected communities.

But doing only this is like beheading hydras: you cut one head off and nine new appear in its place. And with drugs, it's even worse than that - as users who previously were on medical quality clean stuff from legit pharmacies paid for by insurance, they are moving on to street stuff with all the side effects associated (criminal behavior to finance the addiction, contamination due to cutting agents, overdoses due to inconsistent dosing, gang fights, ...).

The opioid crisis must be tackled at the root level, and that is a lack of physical and mental healthcare combined with the lack of a social security network and appropriate governmental aid to regions devastated by 30 years worth of globalization, modernization and rabid capitalism - to continue with the hydra analogy, the US needs to burn off the necks and then kill the body of the beast.

Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#113

Post by kaesar14 »

murbard2 wrote: post #101
shrubble wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. Frédéric Bastiat

Bastiat is specifically referring to rent seeking, occupational licensing, protectionism, etc. The Bastiat quote is on point if your criticism of Purdue Pharma is that it profited from the medical licensing laws and drug prohibition laws that unfairly proscribes teenagers from buying madak cigarettes on the free market. If the criticism is merely that they made money selling addictive drugs, this really isn't what th…

Does it matter what the original intention of the quote is, if it perfectly captures the spirit of the current injustice?

Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#114

Post by IMTDb »

The US right now: "Some doctors told us the negative effects of opioids are not that dangerous compared to the short term benefits on physical pain. We sell that in pharmacies. This is a billion dollar industry. This was definitely a bad choice, we should have listened to the people talking about the danger of that addiction. Let's burn the skarks that were responsible for that".

Also the US right now : "Some doctors are telling us the negative effect of THC are not that dangerous compared to the short term benefits on mental wellbeing. We sell that in dispensaries. This is a billion dollar industry. This is definitely a good choice, we don't need to listen to the people showing the danger of addiction. Let's praise the progressist that are responsible for that".

Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#115

Post by EForEndeavour »

ashtonkem wrote: post #91
bluntfang wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about this a lot, and really believe America was founded on "breaking the rules" and has had really great successes, but really awful consequences. Specific to the pandemic, no one wants to wear a mask. We've been conditioned to believe that breaking the rules (ie disruption) is a good way to move forward. Outside the pandemic, we see oil companies and other manufactures move their operations overs…

> Specific to the pandemic, no one wants to wear a mask. This is another one of those situations where the crazies are driving the conversation, because they are much louder than their actual portion of the population. According to Gallup the portion of their panel who “never” wear a mask outside of their home is 10%, while those who “rarely” wear a mask is 2%. The vast majority of the population wears masks “always”…

Are those Gallup results national-level? If so, then we all know that the 12% of "never or rarely" mask-wearers are unevenly distributed.

Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#116

Post by throwaway5752 »

songshu wrote: post #13

I never understand why doctors are not blamed for prescribing these. Are doctors not supposed to be responsible for prescriptions? If they are not, should we stop allowing them to prescribe? Why don’t doctors unions throw out members who would claim to have been hoodwinked by pharmaceutical companies?

1. Physicians in the US don't have a union. Some conservatives call the AMA a physicians' union, and while it shares some union functions it simply is not one. Physicians are licensed to practice by individual states.

2. Physicians are responsible for writing prescriptions, pharmacists dispense them, and patients self-administer in most cases. The opioid epidemic was caused by failures at each of these levels, not just when writing the rx.

3. Physicians are routinely prosecuted, lose their licenses, and go to jail for this: https://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/crim_admin_actions/index....

Your lack of information on the topic is not the same as a systemic problem. Please do a bit more due diligence before making claims like this.

Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#117

Post by jessaustin »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #88
umvi wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely 100% of opiod usage isn't bad? So 100% of the $10.8B isn't blood money? I'm sure some % of the opioids really helped people. For example, my grandpa has extremely painful back pain, and opioids were a godsend. Yeah, he got addicted, but he's in his 90s anyway, so at least he can live the rest of his life without dealing with crippling back pain.

The cost to market and develop the drug could easily outstrip the revenue from legitimate uses, especially if they spent a lot of money marketing the drug towards people that shouldn't be taking it. So yeah, all $10.8B could be blood money.

How much "development" did it take? Oxy was first manufactured in 1917. "Opioids relieve pain and are much sought by opioid users", film at eleven. Any physician who didn't know what would obviously happen when this drug was prescribed is one whose care I would avoid.

But yeah, take all their money. The actions described in TFA obliterate the corporate veil. Frankly I don't know how they've avoided assassination attempts by the families of addicts.

Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#118

Post by vanderZwan »

songshu wrote: post #58
treefish wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doctors who were prescribing medicine at the time that OxyContin hit the market were not in medical school, they had graduated already. If pharma lies about safety there is no way for a doctor to know unless they conduct their own study, which would require lots of extra time and massive funding. Pharmacists didn't know that the safety data was fudged either. Everyone got their oxycontin from a pharmacist after a doc…

Sorry, I meant that they should have learned about drug safety in medical school, not that they should have learned about this specific drug.

That does change the interpretation of your earlier statement quite a lot, thank you for clarifying. Together with Scoundreller's observation it does seem that there are a number of systemic issues working together in the US to create this problem. And one of these seems to be how doctors prescribe medication.

Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#119

Post by civilized »

IMTDb wrote: post #114

The US right now: "Some doctors told us the negative effects of opioids are not that dangerous compared to the short term benefits on physical pain. We sell that in pharmacies. This is a billion dollar industry. This was definitely a bad choice, we should have listened to the people talking about the danger of that addiction. Let's burn the skarks that were responsible for that". Also the US right now : "Some doctors…

It's a good point to raise - at the same time, I think it's generally accepted that THC is on the safer side of the "problematic drug" spectrum, while opioids are on the riskier side?

Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#120

Post by alexilliamson »

IMTDb wrote: post #114

The US right now: "Some doctors told us the negative effects of opioids are not that dangerous compared to the short term benefits on physical pain. We sell that in pharmacies. This is a billion dollar industry. This was definitely a bad choice, we should have listened to the people talking about the danger of that addiction. Let's burn the skarks that were responsible for that". Also the US right now : "Some doctors…

I have no doubt that the US is being willy-nilly with THC legalization and ignoring the abuse potential to some extent, but do you really think that widespread THC addiction poses the same danger as widespread opioid addiction?
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