Kentucky OxyContin Case Against Purdue Pharma Leads Fight Over Opioid Abuse

By David Armstrong | October 22, 2014

  • October 22, 2014 at 2:25 pm
    brian says:
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    Kudo’s to Kentucky for holding out and taking on the big Pharma industry. It’s a shame if these Kentuckians don’t go after the FDA, another sham of the federal govt. Go Kentucky and save our kids!! I’ve seen the after effects of those addicted to these kind of drugs – it just leads to worse drugs and eventually, heroine. But, Kentucky, don’t forget about the “scum-bag” doctors who supplied the drugs to their patients – that’s another avenue to pursue. Can’t wait to see the outcome. Go after big Pharma, the doctors and the FDA – you’ll be heros.

    • October 23, 2014 at 9:39 am
      B. Hale says:
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      Way to go Brian! You just demonstrated your ignorance and stupidity. We call your type the “Dumb Masses.” Your warped thought process will allow millions that are helped by pain medication every day to be given less or no opioid pain medication due to the less than 10% abusers that don’t take responsibility for their actions.

      While you on a roll with your warped way of thinking go ahead and advocate to take all cars off the road. They kill more every day than pain medication.

      • October 23, 2014 at 10:08 am
        ExciteBiker says:
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        Yes, car accidents kill 110 people every day. But you might be surprised to learn that 40-46 people die every day from prescription medication overdose. The # of scripts per person for opiate painkillers in U.S. states ranges from 52 on the low end to 143 on the high end– 259,000,000 prescriptions are written every year.

        Clearly there is a legitimate medical need for these kinds of medicines. But there is clearly also a problem with over-reliance on the medicines, over-prescription, pill mills and addiction. How to finely tune that balance is a difficult policy concern.

        The federal government has taken a first step by reclassifying these types of medications as schedule CII, meaning prescriptions can no longer be called in, nor can a 90-day supply be procured. Patients will need a special DEA-provided prescription slip from their doctor every 30 days. Many doctors will likely change their prescribing habits due to the new rule. We will see what successes and failures arise from this change. But one thing is clear- doing nothing is not an option.

        • October 23, 2014 at 6:23 pm
          dave says:
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          Doing something close to nothing is what government and the health care industry is doing to deal with not only addiction and death due to opioids- but the fact that opioids lack evidence for noncancer pain- despite over 9000 RCT’s. No other treatment for pain has as many studies- clearly indicating research bias. But despite the bias industry and government continue to promote ineffective opioids to the tune of 16 billion pills a year-do they care that 16000 infants are born in withdrawal to opioids-certainly not. They talk of balanced or safe prescribing- but when i made a FOIA to HSS- which they denied until my Senator became involved- HHS has failed to educate a single doctor in pain care. Lets face the facts despite th rhetoric and rearranging some chairs on the Titanic- government is a friend to pharmaceutical companies and doctors and not to people in pain-and so poor opioid riddled pain care will continue in the U.S. until people put a stop to the madness.

      • October 23, 2014 at 3:02 pm
        Baxtor says:
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        B Hale, you sound like someone that has something to lose in all this. The “tone” in your reply tends to indicate you may have an addiction to this painkiller. It is very dangerous and overally prescribed by doctors in this country. I agree with brian that once doctors start getting sued, they’ll stop running their prescription mills. They love seeing drug addict patients every 30 days. More doctor visits in their pockets and happy patients.

  • October 23, 2014 at 9:56 am
    ExciteBiker says:
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    Remember kids, cannabis is evil and dangerous, but alcohol and pills are awesome and profitable and have never killed anyone!

    OxyContin is literally heroin in pill form, and when the addicts can’t find or afford any more Oxy they start shooting up. That’s not conjecture. That is a fact.

  • October 23, 2014 at 3:23 pm
    Stush says:
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    I’m not buying any of this “blame” the doctors, the industry, the drug companies. Two things bother me, first, the lack of personal responsibility of those who get addicted and then do nothing but continue to take the drugs; and second, the fact that our societal policy is always to try to discourage something, make it socially unacceptabl, call it a moral failure e and finally criminalize it. All of which do nothing for the problem. I say let’s do what they do in Europe, sign ’em up, give ’em a check up, have them come in for counseling but at least give them somehting that they want. You can’t just get rid of the problem by putting people in jail and it is the criminalization of it that creates the lure of profit. And folks not all doctors are scumbags nor are they all saints. Everyone wants to live well, even those hooked on drugs. You also can’t get rid of the problem by lawsuits, either…which is also driven by the profit motive. I say again, let’s make these addicts be responsible for themselve and develop clinics to “treat” them instead of all the crap we are doing now. Not everyone wants to be a drug addict but there is a segment of our society that will always want to self-medicate. I would feel better knowing who they are and where they are than wondering if the guy in the car next to me is too high to drive or has a gun waiting to take my valuables to get his fix. Rather he was high at home and not out in the world, doing his deeds and pretending to be what he is not.

    • October 23, 2014 at 6:26 pm
      dave says:
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      Are the 16000 infants born in withdrawal from opioids also responsible for their suffering. You make the most remarkable assumptions- that there is no need for any government when it comes to government- when all the facts betray your assumption. You advocate for anarchy to deal with the misues of opioids. If you believe in anarchy go live on some island where there is no government or no laws.

    • January 18, 2016 at 5:17 pm
      inez andrucyk says:
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      Do you actually believe that a child-middle or high school actually has the ability to make good decisions? It is the children who raid their parents, relatives, and friends medicine cabinets. They have no idea what these pills can do and once they are hooked their brains are chemically destroyed-chemicals cause brain scars. There is no turning back, they cant change. Once a leg is cut off you cant attach a new one And once holes are in your brain, you cant fill them up. They start as children. Sorry. You are obviously an unempathetic ignorant person who does not care to or want to understand the true nature of these poisonous chemicals. My question to you-Would you prescribe heroin to a pre teen for wisdom teeth extraction? Well that is what is going on. Oxi is more potent than heroin. Maybe you need to do some research.

      • January 19, 2016 at 9:25 am
        Stush says:
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        I am not sure what you said is connected to my post. What I said was that going after the drug companies would not really address the issue; nor would allowing people to self medicate legally, as some have suggested as an alternative, be a good idea. I said I think we need to drop the old assumptions that the “drug problem” can be resolved by criminalizing the product, or those who use it. Prohibition does not work; and addiction is not a moral issue. Your comments about how kids raided their parents medicine cabinet and end up on heroin says more about the parents than the kids. I would not leave loaded guns around the house for fear my kids might make a bad decision and hurt themselves, nor would I leave pain meds anywhere that they could access them. The commercial on TV showed a child going to the medicine chest and taking a handful of pills, would not have occurred in my parents home because my folks just didn’t share with us that they had medication. I did not even know that both of them suffered from high blood pressure; they did not keep their medication in the bathroom cabinet or in the kitchen. So maybe just by dumb luck, I was “spared” that kind of exposure. But I did know a family whose medicine cabinet was like the shelves in a pharmacy. So I blame the parents who only believed in “better living through chemistry” and who thought because medicine was a good thing, that they treated it benignly. Suing Purdue-Pharma for making a product that can be abused will not reduce the addiction. And putting addicts in jail doesn’t help either. But I suspect that asking parents to do a better job in their child’s upbringing is not a viable solution either, as I know that poverty in some households and “affluenza” in others means that families have enough to worry about. I think that the DARE program is probably a better beginning than having no discussions about drugs at all. I am stymied at this point but I maintain that the old assumptions about use and access and punishment are ineffective. What I have found though since we started this thread is something astonishing: that there really are doctors who only care about money and prescribe and over-prescribe just to fatten their wallets. I am guilty of an assumption myself, that I expected doctors and pharmacists to have a sense of obligation to act with integrity. If parents would teach their kids about the realities of prescription drugs and keep them stored safely and if doctors and pharmacists would act sensibly, we wouldn’t have a problem. It seems that it is systemic but as usual we rely on old assumptions, which only lead to addressing the symptoms…maybe it really just goes all the way back to ancient times when man first experienced drugs. We just might be hard wired for anything that increases dopamine. the answer lies in our very physical makeup, where pleasure seeking drives our response to the world. Opium allowed mankind to treat pain, but it is also used to address boredom, poverty, loneliness, insecurity. the real cause is how mankind has chosen to react to our surroundings, the current debate is about the symptoms not the disease and I have no confidence that we will be successful until we look behind the curtain.

  • October 24, 2014 at 7:43 am
    Stush says:
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    You haven’t responded to anything in this discussion. How about showing me the way this is connected to any of this. How do you arrive at anarchy? Please spell it out so I can understand. Political argument is a lost art. All that is said now is 15 second sound bytes and lables and ranting, that is not political discourse, which requires thought and careful enunciation of one’s position. Anarchy is the lack of rule of law. All I said was that we should treat this problem differently and I for one am tired of everyone just assuming that letting people self-medicate LEGALLY might be a better proposition than the current one, of those who supposedly know better, tell the rest of us supposedly stupid people how to live. I am tired of a polity that doesn’t have it’s ass and head wired together, that says it is not OK to stop a pregnancy for fear of preventing a fetus from becoming a human being yet it is OK to put a man to death LEGALLY. And we rely on some old religious reason to allow us to stop adults from choosing who they want to live with, love, share their life with and even marry instead of acknowleding that homosexuality is just a part of who homo sapiens is; we have had gay folks among us for better than the 6,000 years that man has been keeping records or since before the bible was ever written down. I do not advocate anarchy, only that we should recognize that our assumptions about how we should live as a society are all based on false premisis. It is about time we at least looked behind the curtain! All the things we have been doing, with the “war on drugs” “just say no” have not worked and will not work. We need a fresh look at these problems. Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it. Why are people so afraid to address the real problem? I’ll tell you why: it takes courage to doubt the things we have been told were the truth. It is easier to use the same approach as long as you don’t have to live up to it. Those who don’t play the game, should not be making the rules. We need another voice, another look, another response to deal with this crisis. Not more of the same old labelling. It isn’t just as simple as “just say no”. when it get to that point, it is JUST TOO LATE!

    • October 24, 2014 at 9:30 am
      Libby says:
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      Great post, Stush!

  • October 24, 2014 at 12:28 pm
    B. Hale says:
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    Yes I have a connection. I am a veteran of the US Army for almost 30 years. I am a permanent and total disabled veteran that relies on chronic pain medication to continue to function and work. Yes WORK. Not all veterans are drug seekers just like not all chronic pain patients are drug seekers. Each one of you want to throw the baby out with the bath water. Not only have companies made it more difficult to alter the delivery system but there is technology to make it very hard to be a doctor shopper. Just like guns don’t kill people opioids appropriately used don’t overdose patients. Let’s concentrate on personal responsibility and not on the minimal drug abusers while the real victims are patients like me with legitimate chronic pain conditions. Wake up and be informed. What a concept each of have to get out of your “bubble.”

    • October 24, 2014 at 1:50 pm
      Libby says:
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      I don’t think anyone is advocating banning the use of pain medication, but even you have to admit there is alot of abuse surrounding it as well. If people are using the medication appropriately, why shouldn’t doctor shopping be hard to do?

  • October 24, 2014 at 3:12 pm
    Stush says:
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    B Hale, I am on your side, I don’t like the supposed “solution” of curtailing doctor’s priviledges when they are not the cause of the crisis. It is those who after their medical condition is better, they want to continue taking meds until they have to have them. I know they didn’t start out to be addicts but when they are and can’t get them, addicts usually resort to something illegal. the current approach is just to criminalize them, instead of treating them. I have known many people who live productive lives and take opiods daily just to get through the day. My own father was dependent on percodan for years after the surgeon operated on him 4 times and fused the bones in his back. He only had trouble when his doctor retired and the doctor who took over his practice did not believe in pain management through medication. He wanted to operate AGAIN! of course when all you know is to cut people what else could you expect. My father was instead sent to physical therapy and when he came home, he was white as a sheet and drank a whole bottle of whisky to kill the pain. He went to bed and stayed there, and sure enough, at 75, he was not moving around and just sort of atrophied and dried up until he suffered a stroke four months later. My mom still blames doctors without compasssion, and that is what is wrong with these lawsuits. The result will be money for the lawyers and fear for doctors and the only thing available for pain will be the heroin coming in from Mexico and Iran. Criminalization and regulation is the only thing goverment can do and it doesn’t work…at all. We need a different way to look at the problem. Not everyhone is dishonest and those who are didn’t start out that way, they end up like that when they find themselves in a corner. And now the money is going to the black market…..didn’t we learn anything from PROHIBITION?



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