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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: 2) by bradley13 on Sunday September 20 2015, @12:42PM
Doesn't work that way. My understanding is that the bigger problem is the psychological addition, not the physical. Which is to say: Someone likes being zoned out, and they will damn will find some drug that zones them out. Opiates happen to be an easy and (comparatively) safe way to achieve this.
If someone wants to get high, and does so in a way that doesn't affect other people, why is this anyone else's problem? If it becomes a problem, because they lose their job or whatever, then counseling and treatment is still better than driving the problem underground by making it illegal.
Really, it comes back down to that old definition by Mencken: "Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.