can someone explain how the opiod crisis happend?
In: 19
So we discovered a new kind of painkiller that worked really well. It was also very addictive so it would have to be used carefully. The company that made it knew about both things, but decided to hide the information about it being addictive.
Medicine is a business and not regulated as much as you might think. It was (and probably still is) perfectly normal for people from pharmaceutical companies to visit a doctor, give him a sales pitch with a lot of samples, and offer to pay him money if he starts prescribing a medicine more. The company that made the painkillers did this.
Pretty soon people started getting addicted. The company was clever, though. The doctors they sent salesmen to usually catered to poor people who needed the painkillers after workplace injuries. These were people who already tended to go bankrupt and end up homeless, so the company argued these were people *already* addicted to drugs and that their drug was a symptom, not a cause. And considering it cost money to get the drugs, a lot of people once addicted couldn’t get more. So they *would* start turning to illegal drugs. It fit the narrative the company told.
This is a weakness in our culture. We have a tendency to look down on poor people and believe they got there because they are bad people who make bad choices. So when we’re told they’re drug addicts we don’t think, “Well why couldn’t they get help?” but “Well that’s what they get.” So while there were people talking about the problem, a lot of people weren’t listening because it made sense, to them, that these people were doing it to themselves.
To make more money, the company kept talking doctors into using smaller doses for things that wouldn’t normally require painkillers. They were interested in maybe getting it approved to give to children. The entire time they knew the medicine was very addictive but they were not publicizing that information.
So basically: the company knew the drug was dangerous, hid the information, paid doctors to prescribe it even when it wasn’t needed, particularly targeted the people most vulnerable to addiction, and still insists they’re the victim.
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