Who Is Telling the Truth About Prescription Opioid Deaths?

* In 1979, the information director of the FDA said, "Whelan just makes blanket endorsements of food additives. Her organization is a sham, an industry front."

* Ralph Nader claimed: "ACSH is a consumer front organization for its business backers. It has seized the language and style of the existing consumer organizations, but its real purpose, you might say, is to glove the hand that feeds it."

* The Center for Science in the Public Interest stated: "ACSH seems to arrive at conclusions before conducting studies. Through voodoo or alchemy, bodies of scientific knowledge are transmogrified into industry-oriented position statements.

They previously sought funding from Philip Morris. Recent donors include Chevron, Coca-Cola, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Bayer Cropscience, Procter & Gamble, Syngenta, 3M, McDonald's and Altria.

From some sources that may themselves be biased:

"Council on Science and Health is a Corporate Front Group" https://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/why-you-cant-trust-the-ameri...

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Council_on_Sc...

It's naive to assume that the industry dislikes the focus on the "opioid epidemic". It works to their advantage in a variety of ways, but one of the biggest is the formation and reinforcement of a whole new class of specialized clinicians called "pain management specialists". In Florida for example, a law went into effect this past July that effectively barred any non-pain-management specialists from issuing an opioid Rx that exceeds a 72 hour supply.

Even before this law went into effect, the sentiment it conveyed directly impacted the willingness of ordinary docs and medical facilities to reasonably treat pain in persons without a chronic condition that would be handled by a pain management specialist, like postpartum women. My wife was left with only lightweight OTC pain relievers because the hospital said it was too risky to write anything stronger unless there were clear complications.

The outcome of the campaign against the "opioid epidemic"? There is now a specialized clique of doctors for the pharmaceutical sales reps to focus their attention on, there are more flurries of codes to bill for, and there is a niche for enterprising doctors to exploit desperate people to make literal millions for themselves while setting their own hours, just like psychiatrists. In fact, the industry is trying to reshape pain management to be the spitting image of psychiatry, which, especially over the last 5 years or so, has become astronomically lucrative for the industry all around.

The long and short of it is that restrictive regulation for this type of drug is bad news only for the sick people who depend on their medication to function. It will be much harder and much more expensive to get and keep a steady stream of the drugs that allow them to work and live a semblance of a normal life, all so the incumbent political dynasty has a talking point in the next election cycle.

But, err, yeah, let's write off anyone who sees this as a pro-pharma shill...

ACSH does not seem like “anyone” but rather a documented pro-any-paying-industry-shill...