CVS Pharmacy: on the edge of a highway, so people would cruise in, get their drugs, and be out in no time at all. ibid.
I know they’re sick like me. Gotta be number one. ibid.
These changes are good to one way of thinking in the sense that they make it harder to buy and abuse pharmaceutical opioids. But what that does is it drives all these people who are already addicted on to the black market. ibid.
International drug cartels catered to those who had become addicted to prescription pills. As their need for narcotics increased and doctors were more reluctant to prescribe an increasing dose, users turned to heroin, and a synthetic opioid fifty times more powerful: Fentanyl. ibid.
Since 2015 Fentanyl overdoses have been rising dramatically. Rates have soared by 2000% in San Diego. ibid.
The company told me nothing ever. ibid. whistleblower
Late in 2020 the Trump administration rushed to make an announcement for the presidential election. Pleading guilty to three felony counts. The Sackler family would pay a $225 million fine. Purdue Pharma would plead guilt to kickbacks and fraud. And promise to pay fines totalling $8.3 billion. ibid.
Purdue is in bankruptcy and only has about $1 billion which a whole bunch of creditors are already fighting over. That money is never going to be paid by the company or anybody else. ibid.
A cruel irony: the only way the company could pay damages was to increase its sales of drugs, including Oxycontin. ibid.
To fund themselves, the warlords turned to the opium trade and they began to export more and more opium to the West. Adam Curtis, Bitter Lake, BBC 2015
Millions had become addicted to opioids and yet no-one in power had come to rescue them. But the liberals couldn’t face this because they too had no idea how to solve those problems. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head VI Are We a Pigeon? Or Are We Dancer? ***** BBC 2021
But the story of the celebrity overdose overshadows a much larger issue. In the United States more people are now abusing prescription medication than heroin, cocaine and ecstasy combined. The drug of choice for a growing number of users is Oxycodone, a synthetic opiate ... It’s basically heroin made in a lab. Hillbilly Heroin
In Florida some pain clinics are known to dispense medication more than others. ibid.
Some clinics have been set up just to cater to pill addicts. ibid.
Florida has become the pain-killer capital of the US. Of all the Oxycodone dispensed by doctors in the whole country 85% of it comes from Florida. With the abundance of pills the state is seeing a new type of Tourism. ibid.
The opioid crisis is largely a product of the marketing efforts by Purdue and the Sackler family … The nearly 140 opioid-related deaths a day we have here in the States. The Opioid Crisis is Much Worse than You Think, Youtube 18.58, Second Thought 2021
‘The ability to supply, withhold, stockpile and police drugs, and to influence the public conversation about drugs, has been central to projections of US imperial power since the middle of the 20th century’. ibid. Suzanna Reiss, We Sell Drugs: The Alchemy of US Empire
Pleasurable drug use is so contradictory to the Calvanist culture America has been its identity around. ibid.
‘I was promoting a drug on the basis of fraudulent science.’ Addicted: America’s Opioid Crisis, BBC 2019
‘There is no other medication that kills as many people as opioids.’ ibid.
All of these children have a secret that they need to share. ibid.
‘The original opioid epidemic was a prescription opioid epidemic that was caused by the over-prescribing of pain.’ ibid.
Purdue Pharma has earned more than $35 billion from OxyContin sales. The company is wholly owned by the Sacklers. In 2016 the family’s net worth was $13 billion. ibid. captions
It’s hard to find a family in the mid-west that has not been touched by the opioid crisis. Ozark s4e4: Ace Deuce, Wendy’s press conference to announce partnership with Shaw Medical, Netflix 2022