Oxycodone – the generic of OxyContin
It’s way past time to sound the alarm, but finally someone’s paying the price in the opioid epidemic. Doctors, pharmacists, and corporations who overprescribe or understate the dangers of pain pills are finally feeling the pain themselves.
Last week, five states — Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, West Virginia, and Wisconsin — announced legal proceedings against Purdue Pharma, the company that manufactures OxyContin. The lawsuits allege that Purdue knew how dangerous these opioids are and yet continued to peddle them and underplay their potential for addiction.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is holding the corporation accountable for the many deaths in this epidemic, the worst in American history. “Even when it became apparent that thousands of people were dying of opioid abuse, Purdue doubled down by continuing its relentless and deceptive campaign” to convince doctors to write prescriptions for OxyContin, Morrisey said at a press conference.
Forty more states have sued companies who produce opioids, with about 1,600 American cities, counties, and Native American tribes rallying together in a federal lawsuit in Cleveland.
Major OxyContin Drug Bust
All of this comes on the heels of a drug bust last month, when numerous physicians and pharmacists across seven states were charged by federal prosecutors for illegally doling out millions of pain pills. In Ohio and Kentucky alone, 31 doctors, seven pharmacists, and eight nurses were charged with illegally providing OxyContin, morphine, and methadone in what federal prosecutors say is the largest drug bust of its kind. They were all arrested.
The Appalachia region is the area hardest hit by opioid addiction.
For example, West Virginia has the highest rate of opioid overdose in the entire country, with 833 deaths in 2017.
Corrupt Doctors
In some of the most egregious cases across the country, doctors have traded drugs for cash or even sex. Some have handed out signed prescriptions, leaving the rest of the script blank for the patient to fill out. In some cases, the accused also charged a “concierge fee” of up to $600. One doc was found to be prescribing opioids to Facebook friends.
More than 130 people die every day because of an opioid overdose, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. About 80 percent of heroin users first got hooked on prescription opioids, also according to NIDA.
Addicts have been so desperate that some of them have gone to the lengths of having teeth pulled unnecessarily in order to get opioids.
According to the New York Times, last summer a woman in Alabama texted her doctor “Can u get any Xanax?” to which the doctor countered, “What makes you think I know a Xanax source?” followed by a smiley face. He then described his home as the “Fun House.”
The Times also pointed out that prosecutors said the Alabama doctor lured prostitutes and young women into his home, where they became patients in exchange for OxyContin and other opioids.
The “Fun House” was also a destination for heroin, meth, cocaine, and marijuana users. Prosecutors said that police had been to the house before in cases of overdose.
At a news conference after the bust, Brian Benczkowski, assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s criminal division, rattled off some stark numbers: “These cases involve approximately 350,000 opioid prescriptions and more than 32 million pills — the equivalent of a dose of opioids for every man, woman, and child across the states of Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and West Virginia combined.”
The types of doctors getting hit with these charges include orthopedic specialists, dentists, podiatrists, general practitioners, and nurse practitioners. “If so-called medical professionals are going to behave like drug dealers, we’re going to treat them like drug dealers,” Benczkowski added.
The four-month investigation involved 300 agents.
Throughout the nation, about 70,200 people have died of overdoses related to opioids from 1999 to 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
