re: federal prosecutors open massive criminal probe of multiple opioid painkiller companies

How you going to prosecute a company for people who abuse its product? I’m not following.

Seems like some would take the same approach to prosecute firearm companies.

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In the text it also notes that from 2000-2002 the pacu morphine went up 50%.

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Acute postprocedural pain management doesn't normally precipitate addiction.

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It increased by 50 million in the ten years before and 90 million in the ten years after per their chart. In the text it also notes that from 2000-2002 the pacu morphine went up 50%.

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From 1991-2001, it increased from 76 to 138 million. That's an increase of 62 million.
From 2001-2011, it increased from 138 to 219 million. That's an increase of 81 million.

US Population/Prescriptions per American
1991: 253.5 million / 0.245
2001: 285.0 million / 0.484
2011: 311.6 million / 0.703

From 1991-2001, the prescriptions per American increased by 0.219.
From 2001-2011, the prescriptions per American increased by 0.239.

I wouldn't call that skyrocketing. The trend line from 1991 to 2011 is basically straight, not exponential.

I agree with you that placing all of the blame on the pharmaceutical industry is silly. There are no simple answers or causes for what essentially amounts to lots of people in various parts of industry, government, and society pursuing their own interests. It's a big mess.

Don’t think this is tanking. Down 5% today.

McKesson Corporation (NYSE:MCK) is now up well over 30% since the start of the year.

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Obtuse1

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Those are obviously extreme examples.

However, like I said before, those are doctors who are traveling the country giving talks and presentations and such. The compensation is ridiculous, but they're being compensated for a service, and not for just presrcibing meds or using certain plates and screws.

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LINK

This is from the joint commission themselves

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Funny how that paper doesn't support your claims:

"Changes in Prescription Opioid Use Immediately after the release of the standards in 2001, some raised concerns that the standards could lead to inappropriate use of opioids.24 Total opioid prescriptions had been steadily increasing in the U.S. for at least a decade before the standards were released (see Figure 1 below).31 Between 1991 and 1997, the number of prescriptions increased from 76 million to 97 million. This was likely due to advocacy work by pain experts, as described above. From 1997 to 2013, the rate of increase appears to have been somewhat more rapid. Some of this acceleration in the rate of increase in opioid prescribing may have been due to the 1995 approval of the new sustained-release opioid OxyContin.32 The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved labeling saying that iatrogenic addiction was “very rare” and that the delayed absorption of OxyContin reduced the abuse liability of the drug.32 These same claims were used in marketing campaigns to physicians and in more than 40 national pain-management and speaker training conferences for which all expenses were paid.32 The FDA required removal of these unsubstantiated claims from OxyContin’s labeling in 2001. However, the concept that iatrogenic addiction was rare and that long-acting opioids were less addictive had been greatly reinforced and widely repeated, and studies refuting these claims were not publish until several years later.33,34 Because of the steady rise in opioid prescriptions in the decade preceding release of The Joint Commission standards and the other forces encouraging opioid prescribing in the years before the release of the standards, it is difficult to draw conclusions about whether the standards or educational materials related to the standards had an independent effect on the upward trend."

And this is why when I fell and tore a muscle and couldn’t walk or sleep, the doctor only gave me useless tramadol which did nothing.

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How you going to prosecute a company for people who abuse its product? I’m not following.

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Right. If government really cared, it’d prosecute fast food and sugar industry.

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Right. If government really cared, it’d prosecute fast food and sugar industry.

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No kidding. The corn and sugar industry will be viewed like the tobacco industry in the near future.

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Speaking hypothetically here, because I dont know the particulars of your situation:

Patient A goes to doctor B for some painful condition, who writes an opiod script when maybe the patient didnt need it, because pharma rep C sold him on a new formulation that "all the latest research shows is non-addictive when used as directed." Who bears responsibility?

This is a real life scenario because the pharma companies spent a lot of money marketing the idea that opiods werent addictive when used to treat pain, that the whole addiction problem was with recreational use.

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I think they all bear some responsibility. My situation involves prescriptions prescribed by a doctor. Went to a psych and was prescribed 4 xanax bars a day (8 mg). Was the doctor negligent in prescribing that insane of an amount? frick yes he was. Was I negligent in walking into that death trap with eyes wide closed? frick yes I was.

I remember walking out of that doctor's office with a script for 120 xanax bars with 3 refills and felt like I hit the lottery. When the wife found the bottle 8 months later and flushed the pills down the toilet the withdrawal damn near killed me. Grand mal seizures, hallucinations, psych ward for a week. It was awful.