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from the little-call-flood-for-big-pharma dept.
Addiction to heroin and other opiates is a growing problem in the USA, as Presidential hopefuls have learned from Q&A sessions with voters on the campaign trail (previous SN story here).
Tired of encountering dead bodies, the police department of Gloucester, MA (an old city with a large commercial fishing industry) decided to appeal for the public's help in a rather interesting way, via a department Facebook post:
Gotta go make some calls.....
Top 5 Pharmaceutical CEO Salaries:
5. Eli Lilly - John Lechleiter $14.48 million
jlechleiter@lilly.com 317-276-2000
4. Abbott Labs - Miles D. White $17.7 million
miles.d.white@abbott.com 847-937-6100
3. Merck - Kenneth C. Frazier
$25 million + cool private jet.
ken.frazier@merck.com 908-423-1000
2. Johnson & Johnson - Alex Gorsky $20.38 million
ceo@jnj.com 732-524-0400
1. Pfizer - Ian Read $23.3 million
ian.read@pfizer.com 212-573-2323
They're all on Forbes Top 100 CEO salaries as well.
In 2013 The Huffington Post reported that the 11 largest pharmaceutical companies made $711 BILLION in profits in the last decade while their CEO's made a combined $1.57 BILLION in the same period.
Now...don't get mad. Just politely ask them what they are doing to address the opioid epidemic in the United States and if they realize that the latest data shows almost 80% of addicted persons start with a legally prescribed drug that they make. They can definitely be part of the solution here and I believe they will be....might need a little push.
takyon: A newer Facebook post says that Pfizer is in contact with the Gloucester Police Department.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Sunday September 20 2015, @02:56AM
If heroin weren't so damn costly, largely because of its illegality, addicts would get their fix and get on with their day. They wouldn't be overdosing because the medicinal grade stuff is consistently pure, not filled with corn starch and fentanyl and other crap. That's why Keith Richards is still alive but Layne Staley isn't.
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(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @03:04AM
Use might climb a little with legalization, but social cost of that use will decline with legalization...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Francis on Sunday September 20 2015, @03:56AM
Why would that happen? Prescription drugs are pure and a known quantity and people still have huge problems with those.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the problem here is that people are willingly ingesting substances that are known to be toxic in quantities above and beyond what anybody in their right mind would be taking. Legalization doesn't fix that.
Legalization may or may not be a part of the solution, but it's insane to suggest that legalization alone is going to have any positive impact.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Adamsjas on Sunday September 20 2015, @04:36AM
Maybe they suggest legalization AND regulation?
Whiskey is legalized. It also is regulated, inspected, tested, etc.
With legalized marijuana, Washington and Colorado also enacted quality standards, testing requirements etc. Legalization doesn't necessarily mean a free-for-all.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Sunday September 20 2015, @06:21AM
And still, alcohol is abused. The posts were implying that legalization would result in all those problems going away.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday September 20 2015, @09:18AM
The posts were implying that legalization would result in all those problems going away.
The posts implied no such thing.
They were simply saying that things might be a whole lot less deadly, even if you ended up having a certain percentage of high functioning heroin addicts [westgroveclinic.com] around.
Personally, I suspect there would be a lot more people that society would have to take care of (financially and emotionally) forever, which would consume far more than those people could ever return to the community by their input. Still they might contribute something.
I doubt legalization would ever work as a continuing solution, either for an individual addict or society as a whole. Probably there would be fewer overdose deaths, but a lot more people would get drawn into it. Still I can see that there might be other solutions that the never ending war on drugs, which seems to put a lot of people in prison that society has to take care of (financially and emotionally) forever.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hemocyanin on Sunday September 20 2015, @05:26PM
Portugal says you are wholly and totally wrong.
If you have the time, this debate between Glen Greenwald and GWB's drug czar is amazingly good: https://vimeo.com/32110912 [vimeo.com]
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday September 20 2015, @05:27PM
I should have mentioned in my post that Portugal decriminalized ALL drugs 2001.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Sunday September 20 2015, @06:35PM
It's also dishonest of you to suggest that the same results would occur elsewhere just merely by decriminalizing the drugs. It's not a matter of criminalization that leads to all the misery, criminalization only causes some of the misery. Assuming that a different culture's solution would work without having to examine our own culture is naive at best and dangerous at worse.
I'm open to the idea of legalization, but the arguments being used are junk. I'm not aware of any countries with similar cultural institutions to the US decriminalizing all drugs.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday September 20 2015, @09:14PM
Oh get real. Portugal isn't a suburb of Timbuktu -- it's a former colonial power, constitutional republic, there's separation of church and state, and it's a modernized EU member nation. Your arguments just echo the fear-mongering of prohibitionists, but prohibitionists, whether motivated by money or moralism, are just wrong according to the evidence. Sure, you can trot out a parade of horrors, but just alcohol prohibition in the US, the cure was way worse than the problem.
And that bit about Portugal being so different -- damn, I suppose if you were shown evidence that shooting German in the head was fatal, you'd have to test it out on Swedes, because you know, different culture.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tathra on Monday September 21 2015, @05:20AM
wrong. even cops agree [www.leap.cc] that criminalization causes the most misery surrounding drugs by a long shot.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Sunday September 20 2015, @04:59AM
No one is going blind due to illegal alcohol, at least in America. Where does it happen? Places where it is illegal.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by tathra on Sunday September 20 2015, @05:09AM
not since the 1920s anyway, you know, when authorities were deliberately adulterating ethanol to poison drinkers.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Sunday September 20 2015, @06:32PM
That still happens in the US. It's rare, but there are still folks out there that produce bad moonshine. That's not a function of legality, in places where moonshine is common, you buy based upon the reputation of the seller. Sure, you might be the unlucky sod that winds up going blind, but that's usually avoidable if you've got an understanding of the processes being used and you're dealing with a seller that lives in the commnity.
As far as blindness goes, compared with liver disease, suicide and accident, blindness is a relatively minor problem. And in most cases, it's not even a real problem as long as you're careful about where you get the alcohol from.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @05:07AM
Heroin is a lot cheaper than most diverted pharmaceuticals. Dilaudid and Opana are really the only ones that compare to heroin in cost:potency.
(Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday September 20 2015, @06:09AM
Were it not so inexpensive and readily available Portland's pushers would not be begging for spare change on the street.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Sunday September 20 2015, @06:47AM
Not to mention these self righteous pricks cause good people to really suffer. My grandmother died of cancer in agony because all the docs were afraid to prescribe meds that would work because they were afraid of being flagged by the feds. So I have to wonder how many of these people on illegal drugs are on them because they are in REAL PAIN and cannot get shit from a doctor for fear of getting flagged. I know it took my cousin nearly a decade to get put on morphine, and it took him being taken to a shrink because he was hollowing out a bullet to blow his brains out before a doctor took him seriously. He has arthritis in his spine, a scan showed his pain centers were lit up like a xmas tree, yet docs would only give him a Tylenol II and tell him to "learn to live with it".
So everytime I see articles like this all I can think of is my grandmother suffering and hope they all DIAF, preferably after getting third degree burns and being refused pain meds.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday September 20 2015, @09:24AM
Docs seem fairly quick to prescribe Oxy. Probably renewing a prescription is hard.
I know this guy who had open heart surgery this summer and was prescribed a substantial amount of Oxy, but ended up using exactly 4 of them.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday September 21 2015, @01:54AM
Bet it was on the coasts, in the breadbasket and bible belt? You can get an arm ripped off and will be given Tylenol II. The feds in different districts seem to react VERY differently to the same actions, I know of at least 3 docs that have had to have serious fights with the feds to protect their licenses simply because they were taking care of people that were seriously fucked up.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday September 20 2015, @09:53AM
addicts would get their fix and get on with their day
Well, they'd get their fix, anyway.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk