This article gives a little more history on the Purdue Pharma company, along with some information we already read in Dreamland.
"Last week, flacks at Purdue announced that the company will no longer be flooding doctors’ offices with sales representatives hawking OxyContin, the now-notorious opioid painkiller. This move may be the closest admission of guilt we will ever see from Purdue Pharma — or the patriarchs of the Sackler family that gave it birth."
In Dreamland we see that there were some actions taken against Purdue Pharma, for their "misbranding", involving a payout. But, was that enough? Should they have had to do more? What are y'all thoughts?
https://inequality.org/great-divide/big-pharma-firm-brought-us-opioid-crisis/
The payout was equal to only 3 weeks of revenue, which is nothing. Oxy alone generated over 3Billion the year of the payout. In the reading for next week, the author shows that there's a new law (can't remember the name) in which if someone dies from an overdose, the dealer can be held responsible and given 20 years in jail. Of course, so far they've mostly incarcerated Mexican dealers, so I hope that the same standard can be applied to Big Pharma executives.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting comment. It's scary how much power these large corporations have, using money to get out of sticky situations. Also, 20 years in jail for dealers...but nothing for big pharma executives? They seem to be the real 'drug-dealers'
DeleteI continue to think about different power dynamics of this drug cycle. It is unfortunate that the dealers who get in trouble are powerless in many ways.
DeleteThe payout was not representative of Purdue's revenue and really did not affect the company all that much. There should be greater fines and punishments to help hit big pharma a little harder to send the message.
ReplyDeleteInstead of paying fines to the government, I think it would make sense that the government forces some of the payment to be allocated to addiction treatment centers
ReplyDeleteAnd some facts: the company's annual production value of OxCcontin is more than 2 billion dollars, and its production cost is less than one-tenth. Besides, Purdue had won on hundreds of drug addiction-related lawsuits in the past.
ReplyDeleteIt sucks that the source of this epidemic is a company carelessly trying to make a profit. I agree that the fines/penalties need to be heavier and should service drug rehabilitation/treatment.
ReplyDeleteThese big pharma companies tend to profit without much consideration of morality. Then when they are taken to court their lawyers will take care of the case and the big pharma companies end up paying out much less than their overall profit .
ReplyDeleteI think if Purdue and other big pharma companies are ever truly sorry. They need to help pressure law makes to change laws to actually help those addicted to opioids and other substance abuse instead of treating them like criminals.
ReplyDelete