Just as a blind hog will stumble across an acorn now and then, even conspiracy theorists will discover that, sure enough, real conspiracies do exist. And this one is after you, your family and American taxpayers in general. It's pushing those over-prescribed painkillers, and hard. At latest estimate, this modern plague has killed some 165,000 Americans and has made addicts of even more.
Here in Arkansas, state officials responsible for keeping count of the victims have dubbed it an epidemic, and that it is. Tennessee, West Virginia and Alabama, Lord help them, too, may be the only states in the drug-addled Union with more opioid prescriptions per capita than Arkansas and close runner-up Mississippi.
It's not a pretty picture, more Picasso than old master, but it's all too real, as in a clear and present danger. But there are those who love it, like the drugmakers and those who aid and abet them. The long list on a database may be checked more than 2,700 times a day to ferret out victims of drugs like OxyContin, Vicodin and fentanyl. It's an impressive list of users and doesn't include just celebrities. So says the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement.
This plague goes by a number of aliases and adopts various modes of operation, from doctor-shopping to just plain robbery of pharmacies. According to the Associated Press, the country has seen a big jump in such perfectly legal and perfectly deadly prescriptions. Many an Arkansas family is still grieving for those they've lost to this threat or will soon enough lose to it. Nationally, the trade in opioids spent more than an estimated $880 million in pushing their products in just the last decade.
"The opioid lobby has been doing everything it can to preserve the status quo of aggressive prescribing," to quote Dr. Anthony Kolodny, who's fighting the good fight to somehow control these dangerous drugs despite all the odds against him and his fellow opioid-fighters. As he says of the drugmakers, "They are reaping enormous profits from aggressive prescribing." This state may rank 30th in the country in terms of campaign contributions by the opioid lobby to political movers-and-shakers, but that's nothing to be satisfied with.
Talk about unconvincing excuses. Listen to this from the opioid makers and pushers: "We and our members stand with patients, providers, law enforcement, policymakers and others in calling for and supporting national policies and action to address opioid abuse." Even if there is little or no evidence that the drugs are effective, efficient or economical when it comes to treating chronic pain and headaches. And even though they come with a high risk of addiction.
The drug lobby now seems as active and pestiferous as the opioid epidemic. Despite a flood of crocodile tears large enough to produce an ocean or two of hypocrisy. Back in 2007, the makers of OxyContin pled guilty to misleading the American public about the addictive nature of their product and agreed to pay $600 million in fines. And that was cheap considering all the dough they've raked in by abusing their patients and taxpayers in general.
Get this: The drugmakers are mass-producing not only their old pharmaceuticals but new ones. Now they're pushing for laws that don't just permit but require that insurers and pharmacists give preferential treatment to their new line of patent-protected abuse-deterrent opioid. Though they would seem to have no real purpose except to pad the drug companies' own bottom lines. At last count, more than a couple of dozen such laws proposed contain almost identical legal language drafted by the opioid companies' own lawyers. This is no coincidence; it's a conspiracy.
Editorial on 09/24/2016