Suing Walmart

[minx]

The justice department is going after Walmart for their role in the opioid crisis saying that they misfilled thousands of questionable prescriptions.


I don't quite get it to be honest.  As far as I know, there was no real process for pharmacists to track or report people/doctors who were writing a lot of weird prescriptions at the beginning of all of this.
And WM says that it asked the FDA for guidance because their pharmacists were hesitant to fill some of them, but that the FDA didn't do shit.

I feel this entire mess should be laid at the feet of two entities - Purdue Pharma and the FDA.  Perdue KNEW that this shit was highly addictive and had severe withdrawal effects and downplayed or hid them while marketing this stuff as the Most Amazing Painkiller Ever!  Kills even the most severe pain AND isn't addictive!  And the FDA approved this shit without doing their due diligence.

Were there doctors who were writing fraudulent prescriptions - of course.  And there were pharmacists filling them without any questions asked.
Those people should be arrested and jailed.  But the doctors who wrote one prescription for 30 pills and refilled it every month?  To me, they shouldn't be held liable for believing Perdue.

And every person involved in the approval and marketing process for Oxy should be up on charges.  Every single one.  And yeah, I include the folks at the FDA in this too.

WM is easy pickings cause they're so large, and the government is hoping to suck some money out of them.  But we all know those fines will never go to help the people who have been directly affected by this.

[Dave's Not Here Man]

Damn. I don't even know which dog I'd want in that fight. The only people that have better lawyers than the government is...... scratch that. The current govt lawyers are pretty much con-men and scoundrels so I'm guessing they're at least as good as Walmart's. But seriously, I'd rather not penalize a business for doing business when they comply with the law. Ethics play a part but we don't penalize gigantic entities and the individuals that work their levers for ethics violations. Not in the context of crime and punishment. It's really nothing more than theater to go after Walmart for only being the vehicle in which the products are transported from the dealer to the user.

As we've discussed before, I'm still not entirely sure where I stand with Purdue being pursued and accused of what they say, let alone being responsible for the deaths. I'm only slightly less neutral when it comes to doctors, which may have a sense that the drugs are being abused or misuses, but need to balance that with the entire purpose of being a physician. "Causing no harm" is part of the oath, but not the basis of medicine.

I feel like the individual is the main, if not lone culprit but I also understand there is a chain involved that in theory is supposed to protect that individual from himself. I just happen to disagree with it a good part of the time. Aside from that, the GOVERNMENT is the fallback position. They could just as easily ban these substances or set a hard limit on how and to whom they can be prescribed.

[minx]

Well, in the case of Oxy, I do feel Purdue has the lion's share of the responsibility. There's no way they could not have known how addictive it was, and they deliberately marketed it as being non-addictive.
Plus they really, really pushed it, even when their own staff were questioning the orders. There was documented emails where sales people were telling their managers and higher-ups that small pharmacies and doctors were ordering enough pills to supply the entire town 20 times over, and they were told to send out that order.

And I disagree about the individual in this case - these people were being told by their doctors to take this shit. And I'd say that 90% of us would take it because we trust the doctors not to harm us.
I broke my arm about 15 or so years ago, and the orthopedist gave me a shit ton of Percocets. At the time, my spouse said "Well he wouldn't have given you so many if he didn't think you should use them if you're in pain"
I suspect others get hooked in that manner as well - if the doctor gives you 30 pills and then refills, it must be okay to use them if you're still experiencing pain....
Plus the doctor is telling you that they're easy to stop (because he's listening to the pharmaceutical rep)

I do blame the FDA - as soon as they realized how addictive this shit is, they should have gotten Perdue to create a realistic plan to help people stop taking it so they could taper off successfully. Instead, they said they were going after doctors who 'overprescribed' so too many idiots panicked and simply stopped writing refills.

Either way, it's an unholy mess. And I don't see it improving.

[bobathon]

One should only take remedies that have the Dr Trump seal of approval. Like bleach.

[minx]

www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/12/22/sackler-unsealed-documents/

You can't convince me that the Sackler family didn't know what they were marketing and how it was ripe for abuse if not prescribed and monitored correctly.
May each one of them rot in hell for their roles in this.

[Dave's Not Here Man]

They sound just slightly less dangerous than the Christ Family.