Budapest Post

Cum Deo pro Patria et Libertate
Budapest, Europe and world news

Drug makers conspired to worsen the opioid crisis. They have blood on their hands

Drug makers conspired to worsen the opioid crisis. They have blood on their hands

Johnson & Johnson and others profited from addiction and death – and yet they still don’t think they’ve done anything wrong

Johnson & Johnson came out swinging after an Oklahoma judge ruled this week that the company has blood on its hands for driving America’s opioid epidemic.

The pharmaceutical giant tried to blame Mexicans, doctors and, inevitably, the victims themselves for the biggest drug epidemic in the country’s history. Its lawyers reframed a corporate engineered tragedy that has escalated for two decades, and claimed more than 400,000 lives, as a “drug abuse crisis”, neatly shifting responsibility from those who sold prescription opioids to those who used them.

Johnson & Johnson painted itself as a victim of unwarranted smears by grasping opportunists trying to lay their hands on its money when all the company wanted to do was help people.

Judge Thad Balkman wasn’t having it. After hearing nearly two months of evidence, the Oklahoma judge’s damning verdict placed Johnson & Johnson squarely at the forefront of what can only be called a conspiracy by opioid manufacturers to profit from addiction and death.

Balkman found that the company’s “false, misleading, and dangerous marketing campaigns have caused exponentially increasing rates of addiction, overdose deaths”. He said the drug maker lied about the science in training sales reps to tell doctors its high-strength narcotic painkillers were safe and effective when they were addictive and had a limited impact on pain.

Oklahoma’s attorney general, Mike Hunter, called the marketing strategy “a cynical, deceitful multimillion-dollar brainwashing campaign” to pressure doctors into prescribing narcotic painkillers even as the death toll mounted.

Balkman also found that Johnson & Johnson was part of a wider collaboration by opioid makers to change medical policy in the US by creating the illusion of an epidemic of untreated pain to which opioids were the solution. The result was a surge through the 2000s in the prescribing of narcotic painkillers as a long-term treatment for even minor pain, with no proper study of the claims made for the drugs or the consequences.

The ruling is the most significant since Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to criminal charges in 2007 and paid a $600m fine over the marketing of its high-strength opioid OxyContin, which played a major role in firing up the epidemic.

The two cases are striking in their similarity. Much of what Balkman found about Johnson & Johnson’s methods echoed those of Purdue in its conviction 12 years ago. That in itself is indicative of how little a central lesson of the epidemic – that corporations should not be allowed to take control of medical policy – was learned after Purdue’s conviction. The opioid industry went on much as before.

And even now, amid a flood of lawsuits and financial settlements, there is little evidence that lesson is being applied. Purdue continued its old ways for years and is only now being held to some kind of account with the revelation this week that its owners, members of the Sackler family, have offered to give up control of the company and some of the profits they made from OxyContin as part of a settlement worth up to $12bn.

At the heart of the opioid crisis is the structure of American healthcare. It is less of a service than an industry with corporations – drug makers, insurance companies, hospital chains – wielding considerable influence over medical policy and the provision of treatment.

Senator Joe Manchin has described the flooding of his state, West Virginia, with millions of prescription opioids as a business strategy: “It’s an epidemic because we have a business model for it. Follow the money.”

It was a business model the industry was free to pursue because its vast wealth kept sceptical parts of the medical profession, regulators and politicians at bay. And when the opioid profiteers did run into trouble, they bought their way out with little accountability or change.

Purdue, Johnson & Johnson and other opioid makers used their huge resources to shape a policy that made opioids the default treatment for pain. They funded ostensibly independent professional organisations that were instrumental in the introduction of policies that led hospitals and clinics to strong-arm doctors into prescribing narcotics. Medical policies shaped by industry marketing departments took precedence of the judgment of doctors.

Almost unbelievably, it was taken as normal that sales reps with no medical background would “educate” primary care doctors, who received little training in the treatment of pain. Johnson & Johnson, Purdue and others exploited that gap to send in their reps waving manipulated studies and thin data to reassure doctors there was little risk of addiction from prescription opioids. Never was there a proper discussion of addiction itself. The sales reps weren’t trained to do that.

When the alarm bells began to ring as addiction and overdoses rose, those same companies kept the floodgates of mass prescribing open by buying the complicity of Congress and compliance of the American Medical Association. The din of money drowned out the many warnings about the devastation being wrought as the industry fought back by creating the myth of an epidemic of untreated pain and forged a false moral argument that the “addicts” should not be permitted to take opioids away from “legitimate” pain patients.

When occasionally the regulators and prosecutors intruded, opioid makers bought their way out of a public accounting by paying millions of dollars to settle cases without admitting liability. That has been going on so long it’s regarded as the cost of doing business. And it’s not restricted to opioids.

Six years ago, Johnson & Johnson and its pharmaceutical subsidiaries paid more than $2bn to head off criminal charges and civil suits for illegally pushing three of its drugs to doctors for uses for which they were not approved as well as paying bribes to physicians to prescribe them. As with Purdue in 2007, the settlement required the company to sign a Corporate Integrity Agreement which was supposed to ensure federal oversight of Johnson & Johnson’s marketing.

In practice, the payments and oversight changed little. The epidemic rolled on and grew.

Neither was it just the manufacturers. Opioid distributors – some of the largest corporations in the US if not the most widely known – have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to the justice department to avoid trials for repeatedly failing to obey the law. Their response to being held accountable was to use their political clout to avoid criminal prosecutions and pressure Congress to weaken the Drug Enforcement Administration’s powers to regulate opioid deliveries.

So what has changed? There has been some financial accounting. Purdue Pharma is a shell of the company it once was. Other drug makers may struggle to survive or take a big hit to their profits to stay out of court. A few executives may go to prison.

But as Johnson & Johnson’s response shows, the opioid makers don’t think they’ve done anything wrong. They certainly don’t take responsibility for launching a prescription pill epidemic that morphed into a heroin and fentanyl crisis as well.

The pharmaceutical industry remains influential over medical policy and practice, and continues to spend more than any other business on lobbying Congress. The drug makers still defend profits at the expense of patients. Just ask those Americans forced to go to Canada to buy the insulin they can’t afford at home.

Reform of the system that made the opioid epidemic is still a long way off. Much easier to blame the Mexicans.

  

Chris McGreal in the author of American Overdose, The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts.

AI Disclaimer: An advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system generated the content of this page on its own. This innovative technology conducts extensive research from a variety of reliable sources, performs rigorous fact-checking and verification, cleans up and balances biased or manipulated content, and presents a minimal factual summary that is just enough yet essential for you to function as an informed and educated citizen. Please keep in mind, however, that this system is an evolving technology, and as a result, the article may contain accidental inaccuracies or errors. We urge you to help us improve our site by reporting any inaccuracies you find using the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of this page. Your helpful feedback helps us improve our system and deliver more precise content. When you find an article of interest here, please look for the full and extensive coverage of this topic in traditional news sources, as they are written by professional journalists that we try to support, not replace. We appreciate your understanding and assistance.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Vatican hosts first Catholic LGBTQ pilgrimage
Apple Unveils iPhone 17 Series, iPhone Air, Apple Watch 11 and More at 'Awe Dropping' Event
France joins Eurozone’s ‘periphery’ as turmoil deepens, say investors
France Faces New Political Crisis, again, as Prime Minister Bayrou Pushed Out
Nayib Bukele Points Out Belgian Hypocrisy as Brussels Considers Sending Army into the Streets
France, at an Impasse, Heads Toward Another Government Collapse
The Country That Got Too Rich? Public Spending Dominates Norway Election
EU Proposes Phasing Out Russian Oil and Gas by End of 2027 to End Energy Dependence
More Than 150,000 Followers for a Fictional Character: The New Influencers Are AI Creations
EU Prepares for War
Trump Threatens Retaliatory Tariffs After EU Imposes €2.95 Billion Fine on Google
Tesla Board Proposes Unprecedented One-Trillion-Dollar Performance Package for Elon Musk
Gold Could Reach Nearly $5,000 if Fed Independence Is Undermined, Goldman Sachs Warns
Uruguay, Colombia and Paraguay Secure Places at 2026 World Cup
Trump Administration Advances Plans to Rebrand Pentagon as Department of War Instead of the Fake Term Department of Defense
Big Tech Executives Laud Trump at White House Dinner, Unveil Massive U.S. Investments
Tether Expands into Gold Sector with Profit-Driven Diversification
‘Looks Like a Wig’: Online Users Express Concern Over Kate Middleton
Florida’s Vaccine Revolution: DeSantis Declares War on Mandates
Trump’s New War – and the ‘Drug Tyrant’ Fearing Invasion: ‘1,200 Missiles Aimed at Us’
"The Situation Has Never Been This Bad": The Fall of PepsiCo
At the Parade in China: Laser Weapons, 'Eagle Strike,' and a Missile Capable of 'Striking Anywhere in the World'
The Fashion Designer Who Became an Italian Symbol: Giorgio Armani Has Died at 91
Putin Celebrates ‘Unprecedentedly High’ Ties with China as Gazprom Seals Power of Siberia-2 Deal
China Unveils New Weapons in Grand Military Parade as Xi Hosts Putin and Kim
Rapper Cardi B Cleared of Liability in Los Angeles Civil Assault Trial
Google Avoids Break-Up in U.S. Antitrust Case as Stocks Rise
Couple celebrates 80th wedding anniversary at assisted living facility in Lancaster
Information Warfare in the Age of AI: How Language Models Become Targets and Tools
The White House on LinkedIn Has Changed Their Profile Picture to Donald Trump
"Insulted the Prophet Muhammad": Woman Burned Alive by Angry Mob in Niger State, Nigeria
Trump Responds to Death Rumors – Announces 'Missile City'
Druzhba Pipeline Incident Sparks Geopolitical Tensions
Cost of Opposition Leader Péter Magyar's Economic Plan Revealed
Germany in Turmoil: Ukrainian Teenage Girl Pushed to Death by Illegal Iraqi Migrant
United Krack down on human rights: Graham Linehan Arrested at Heathrow Over Three X Posts, Hospitalised, Released on Bail with Posting Ban
Asian and Middle Eastern Investors Avoid US Markets
Ray Dalio Warns of US Shift to Autocracy
Eurozone Inflation Rises to 2.1% in August
Russia and China Sign New Gas Pipeline Deal
Von der Leyen's Plane Hit by Suspected Russian GPS Interference in an Incident Believed to Be Caused by Russia or by Pro-Peace or by Anti-Corruption European Activists
China's Robotics Industry Fuels Export Surge
Suntory Chairman Resigns After Police Probe
Gold Price Hits New All-Time Record
UK Fintechs Explore Buying US Banks
Greece Suspends 5% of Schools as Birth Rate Drops
Apollo to Launch $5 Billion Sports Investment Vehicle
Bolsonaro Trial Nears Close Amid US-Brazil Tension
European Banks Push for Lower Cross-Border Barriers
Poland's Offshore Wind Sector Attracts Investors
×