United States The Opioid Crisis

[OliverCromwell]

Johnson and Johnson was just successfully sued to the tune of about a half-billion dollars for over their supposed role in the opioid crisis. Even more punitive settlements against other companies look like they're coming soon.

Are we seriously coming to a point where we're going to blame pharmaceutical companies selling legal and approved drugs with important medicinal uses for the opioid crisis now? What happened to a conservative movement that was willing to embrace personal responsibility instead of accusing doctors and medical companies of being responsible for the active choice people made to take nonprescription drugs (prescription drugs in non-prescripted contexts) and in many cases to actively deceive medical professionals to get more of those drugs? The hypocrisy of those who would happily exalt personal responsibility and the limited government as pertains to the free market upon until the moment when their own community faces the slightest bit of adversity is astounding--why should this present opioid crisis be treated any differently than, say, the crack epidemic of the 80s and 90s which was successfully fought with zero-tolerance law and order policies centered around promoting personal responsibility for drug use and trafficking? And in particular, why has the "solution" to the opioid crisis suddenly become having the government impose punitive damages on companies for selling legal, approved drugs that will almost inevitably stifle future drug development and distribution?

 

[SergeantBrother]

This ruling is completely disgusting. In fact, it may well make it far more difficult for people in pain to get the medication that they need to live more normal lives.

I wouldn’t suggest that zero tolerance policing should be the method used to cure the opioid epidemic. We did that with crack and we have one of the largest prison populations in the world with millions of people living as second class citizens because of criminal records as well as a growing police state - including but not limited to no knock warrants, civil forfeiture, and outrageous prison sentences for non-violent offenders.

The most moral solution would be to end this ridiculous war on drugs and treat addiction as a health crisis rather than a criminal one. We could also try to fix the social problems that make addiction more likely.

 

[Isem]

The main court finding according to the article was that the company had been engaging in “false, misleading, and dangerous marketing campaigns” to both patients and doctors. I dunno if it's the case for these opiods but I remember a feature from John Oliver which covered how pharmaceutical companies were given doctors incentives to push their particular medicine. If it's the case here I can understand why the company is eating the fine and why others are in the firing line because it would be trying to push doctors to sell more of their drugs when unnecessary and push patients to want more of their drugs.

There's probably more details but the article doesn't really show what evidence was presented to the court so I can't really say if they were doing it or not.