‘In the first six months of 2008 67% of the OxyCodone nationwide that was put out by dispensing practitioners came out of Broward County, Florida.’ American Addict, 2016
Each year more than 46,000 people die from a drug overdose. Chasing the Dragon: The Life of an Opiate Addict, 2016
‘Being addicted to opiates is like chasing a dragon; you’re constantly seeking that first high.’ ibid.
Approximately one in five high school seniors reports misusing prescription drugs at least once in their lifetime. ibid.
A 2014 national survey found an estimated 1.4 million people in the US abused a prescription pain killer for the first time that year. ibid.
‘A girlfriend of mine introduced me to heroin; I could get a whole lot more for a whole lot less.’ ibid.
Most first-time abusers of painkillers obtain them from a friend or relative. ibid.
In the USA someone dies from a heroin overdose every 50 minutes. Smack in Suburbia: America’s Heroin Crisis, BBC 2016
‘Within three days they begin to develop a tolerance, meaning that they will go through some level of withdrawal if they don’t use, and they will need more and more to use to feel that original high.’ ibid.
Purdue convinced doctors they could use Oxycontin for patients on a daily basis and they wouldn’t get addicted. ibid.
Millions of people got hooked. And now on an average day in the US more than 650,000 opioid prescriptions are dispensed and nearly 4,000 people start abusing the pills. ibid.
It was the pill that revolutionised the way we live with pain. It was a revolution driven by a marketing campaign that targeted our doctors. We now spend more than ten billion dollars a year on treatment with narcotic pain pills. And we’re spending hundreds of millions more on the addictions the pain pills cause. The Fifth Estate: Time Bomb: Oxycontin, CBC 2013
A multi-billion-dollar business … introduced in 1996. ibid.
By 2011 Canada would rank second in the world for opioid prescriptions and second in the world for deaths from overdoses. ibid.
By as early as 1995 they had known that many of their claims about Oxycontin including its addictive nature were fraudulent. ibid.
‘There’s too much money to be made.’ Our World: America’s Opioid Crisis, critic, BBC 2019
‘When they first entered life, your first breath of air came along with withdrawal symptoms.’ ibid. addict
‘There is no other medication that kills so many people as opioids.’ ibid. critic
One in eight children in America live with a parent who suffers from a substance use disorder. And they all have secrets they need to share. ibid.
Every eleven minutes someone dies of a heart attack. ibid.
America’s greatest health crisis. 80% of heroin users started their path to addiction on prescription painkillers. And now pharmaceutical companies have been blamed for igniting this epidemic. ibid.
It was in the 1990s that this opioid epidemic began. ibid.
It was Purdue Pharma, with their painkiller Oxycontin, that revolutionised how they were marketed. 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.
‘Some of these Pharmaceutical companies they’re just too big to care.’ ibid. critic
I’m Dan Schneider. And I’m a pharmacist … My son was murdered buying crack in the Lower 9th Ward. The police have the attitude that it’s another drug deal gone bad. And these kids maybe got what they deserved. The New Orleans police department was corrupt. And almost none of the murders were ever solved. But I was determined to get the killer off the street. The Pharmacist I: Justice for Danny, Netflix 2020
I started noticing in the drug store an unusual amount of high-powered opiate prescriptions. There was a certain doctor using her licence to virtually decimate my community. ibid.
I saw this opiate epidemic in its infancy. We were creating addicts all over this country. Purdue could have done things to stop this but they saw the profits. Not only were they white-collar criminals, they were white-collar murderers. My son’s killer paid a price. What about Purdue Pharma? What price have they paid? They gave birth to a crisis that killed hundreds of thousands of people. ibid.
Jeffrey [dealer] said he knew my son and he wouldn’t have killed my son. ibid.
Addiction was not spoken of in pharmacy school. It’s not something we thought we’d have to face. The Pharmacist II: A Mission from God
When I see these kids coming in with these Oxycodone prescriptions I felt that something wasn’t right about this. ibid.
I was going out there [local pill mill] almost every week filming hard. ibid.
My mind went into paranoia. I really do believe I crossed the edge. The Pharmacist III: Dope Dealers with White Lab Coats
I was pretty much working full time at shutting Dr Cleggett down. ibid.
I saw Dr Cleggett taking pills herself when arriving at the clinic. The Pharmacist IV: The Tunnell, local prosecutor
Since 2000, more than 500,000 Americans have died of opioid overdoses. Millions of Americans have become addicted. Every 25 minutes a baby is born with opioid withdrawal. The US government estimates that the cost of opioid abuse is over $1 trillion. We call this ‘the opioid crisis’. But a crisis is something that just ‘happens’. What if we discovered that the opioid crisis was caused by businesses seeking to profit from pain? What if behind the crisis there was a spectacular crime? Alex Gibney, The Crime of the Century I ***** Sky Documentaries 2021
No American family has profited more from controlled substances, from Valium and Oxycontin, than the Sacklers. ibid.
In the 1960s Sackler became incredibly rich by expanding the market for addictive tranquillizers. ibid.
Controlled-release Oxycodone, or Oxycontin, would be the drug that triggered what we call the ‘opioid crisis.’ ibid.
Johnson & Johnson also genetically altered the nature of the plant to create a super-poppy … Soon 74,000 acres of Tasmania were devoted to opium. ibid.
Blinn was taking the equivalent of 200 hits of heroin a day. He kept the prescription bottle for 20 years because he felt something was not right. ibid.
A nationwide criminal conspiracy that included Fraud, Pills Mills, doctors trading drugs for sex, false statements to Congress, and attempts to target key officials of the Bush administration … The FDA was used to falsely and fraudulently market Oxycontin. ibid.
None of them would spend a day in prison. ibid.
Lifetree Pain Clinic prescription: 60 x Amitriptyline 50mg; 30 x Celexa 40mg; 224 x Oxycodone 30mg; 112 Percocet 10/325mg; 60 x Requip 1mg; 60 x Xanax 1mg; 60 x Zanaflex 4mg. ibid.
Starting in 2013 a powerful synthetic opioid surged in popularity: Fentanyl. It’s a 100 times more powerful than morphine. Rather than reckoning with its dangers, companies sold it as aggressively as drug cartels. But instead of gun-toting dealers on street corners, men and women in suits and lab coats pushed opioids and cash bonuses and power-point presentations at pain management jamborees. Flush with campaign cash from Big Pharma, Congress would look the other way. ibid.
‘40 people every day die from Prescription overdoses.’ Alex Gibney, The Crime of the Century II ***** news
‘The opioid crisis started with prescriptions, prescriptions and patient care. This idea that we weren’t adequately treating pain. Drugs like Oxycontin … began to preach the gospel of the opioid … They developed new medical terms like pseudo-addiction … As you get stronger drugs, it’s more expensive. ibid. Joe Rannazzisi, insider whistleblower gives evidence
Fentanyl byproducts is killing a lot of people … It was a natural progression … Overdose deaths is under-reported, we know that for sure so we don’t know really how many people died. We started seeing massive amounts of death … prescriptions: 250 million. ibid.
An onslaught of pills, hundreds of thousands of deaths. Who is accountable? ibid. The Washington Post online article 20 July 2019
Some of America’s biggest pharmaceuticals were not only profiting from the opioid crisis, they may have been manufacturing it. ibid.
We have had many run-ins with the Sacklers lately. The crisis began when Oxycontin hit the streets. Their man point of contention is that they did not ignore the opioid crisis single-handedly. Whether you believe that or don’t believe that, there is voluminous evidence the crisis began when Oxycontin hit the streets. Purdue [Pharma] led the charge. ibid. Bernstein, Washington Post
Generic versions … sending massive amounts of these drugs downstream because there were corrupt doctors all over the country. It became like the Wild West. This was a new drug cartel that was being established in the United States. But instead of coming in from a foreign country, they were drug dealers who were wearing suits and lab-coats. ibid.
A patient survey form. You say, I got back pain. The problem is that no-one ever saw the patient. As long as they have any kind of credit card they were fine. You’d have a doctor on the east coast, a patient and drug seeker on the west coast, the pharmacy was in the mid-west. It was just a trafficking organisation that was hiding behind the veil of the internet. ibid.