Broward County has more pill-mills (142) than McDonald’s. ibid.
Superior Injury Centre 870-6370. ibid.
There was one store in particular that was known by drug dealers as the go-to: CVS Pharmacy. ibid.
In 2011 there was a crack-down by the DEA. Operation Pill Nation involved more than 500 law-enforcement officers resulting in seizures of 7 vehicles, $19 million in cash and 105 arrests. ibid.
But the real problem wasn’t on the street. It was in the executive suites of pharmaceutical companies which had become addicted to the profits opioids could deliver. ibid.
Workers disciplined in Prozac mailings: At least one Lilly’s employee fired; seven face various other measures. ibid.
The product was Act-Tiv. It was a lolly-pop made of Fentanyl whose potency carried the enormous risk of overdose. ibid.
They start paying exorbitantly, a huge number of speaker programs, and they use the speaker program basically as a way of cover for the bribes they are paying. ibid. whistleblower
Clearly we’re breaking the law. ibid.
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.
It’s been nearly thirty years since Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs. But nearly sixteen million Americas are regularly getting high on illegal narcotics each month. America’s War on Drugs IV: Heroin, Terrorists and Kings of Pain, A&E 2017
As Afghan heroin floods the market, back at home the Bush administration pushes through a new anti-terror law that’ll change the face of the domestic war on drugs. ibid.
2001 Afghan opium production: 185 tons; 2011 Afghan opium production 5,800 tons = 3,000% increase. ibid.
After going for the border crossings in the west and east, Chapo’s Sinaloa cartel has come for the ultimate prize: Juarez. ibid.
The pharmaceutical industry also known as Big Pharma – they have hundreds of thousands of doctors on their payroll. In the last decade they’ve spent over $2 billion on lobbying … $3 billion is spent on drug ads each year. ibid.
The doctors were pushing Oxycontin also known as Oxycodone. ibid.
Copy-cat pain clinics began to pop up. ibid.
Drug lords in Afghanistan and Mexico are poised to meet the demand. And epidemic is coming: heroin. ibid.
By 1944 the Fuhrer himself is an addict: hooked on Oxycodone and Cocaine. Nazis on Drugs: Hitler & the Blitzkrieg, History 2019
The Nazis planned for Pervatin pills to even the odds. ibid.
‘The RAF called them wakey-wakey pills’ … The British also begin using amphetamines with their ground troops. ibid.
Morell’s secret diary makes clear that the drug he gave Hitler is Eukodal, the German word for an addictive synthetic opioid. Eukodal is twice as strong as morphine and just as addictive. It’s more commonly known today as Oxycodone. ibid.
In America in the 1960s was a man who was convinced that there was something frightening hidden under the surface of the new modern suburbs. Behind what looked like a confident individualism was rising up throughout America there were really hidden fears eating away at people from inside. There were feelings of anxiety, loneliness and emptiness, and he was convinced he could make a lot of money out of these feelings: he was called Arthur Sackler … Valium: he offered it to the doctors as an extraordinary new way to treat these inner anxieties, and he said it wasn’t dangerous or addictive. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head III: Money Changes Everything, BBC 2021
Betty Ford’s admission had a dramatic effect. In its wake stories began to pour out of people all across America who were also addicted to Valium. It seemed that there was a private hidden world of anxiety behind the public faces that affected millions of people. But Arthur Sackler who in the 1960s had promoted Valium as beneficial and non-addictive was unrepentant. And a company that he and his two brothers had started was about to develop a new drug: a synthetic form of opium called Oxycontin, and that was going to deal with the next wave of anxiety that would hit America. ibid.
A new drug was created: it was made by a company that had been founded by Arthur Sackler. In the 1970s Sackler had marketed the drug Valium to deal with the feelings of anxiety and loneliness in the sufferers. He had died in the 1980s but in the mid-’90s his company released a new drug called Oxycontin. It was a synthetic form of opium and it was sold as a painkiller … The doctors gave them Oxycontin, they got their benefits, they also discovered that Oxycontin made them feel safe, in a bubble, protected from the anxieties and fears of the new post-industrial world. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head V: The Lordly Ones *****
Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art protest Nan Goldin et al: ‘Sacklers’ lies, people die.’ Arena: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, BBC 2023
Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency 1983-2022 (35mm slideshow) ibid.
My relationship to Oxycontin started several years ago in Berlin. It was originally prescribed for surgery. So I took it as directed. I got addicted overnight. In the beginning 40 mg was too strong. But as my habit grew there was never enough. I went from 3 pills a day as prescribed to 18. ibid.
Crushing and snorting was my full-time job. When I got out of treatment I learned that the Sackler family whose name I knew from museums and galleries were responsible for the epidemic …. I started a group P.A.I.N. to hold them accountable. ibid.
‘There’s the family of the art world, and the museum world and philanthropy. And then there’s the grubby, unpleasant story of Big Pharma marketing and death.’ ibid.
My anger at the Sackler family. It’s personal. I hate these people. But it’s not about my own addiction. ibid.
All the museums, institutions, need to stop taking money from these corrupt evil bastards. ibid. Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art protest
The sales representatives – the people promoting the drug to doctors and pharmacists – were going around and telling them that this painkiller, which was called Oxycontin, was designed in a way where it wouldn’t be abused. Barry Meier, interview The Bottom Line, Al Jazeera 2023