Since we're on the topic of drug dealers, I have a confession to make: I spend very little time watching cable news. So I'll admit that this post is about a topic that I'm, we'll say, not an expert in. But I think an outsider perspective can be useful to highlight aspects that people have become so accustomed to that they no longer notice (you wouldn't interview a fish about water, would you?) The thing that always strikes me when watching cable news is the near uniformity of the commercials. It's a nearly endless stream of "Does your X not work? Talk to your doctor about Y". Each commercial is like a revolving carousel of the same pattern - happy older people enjoying the sunshine, then a black and white shot showing them clutching some malfunctioning body part, finally followed by happy times fishing with grandchildren while a soothing voice reads a list of possible side effects.
The cause of this is pretty clear - cable news watchers are increasingly older, so the advertising caters heavily towards them. But it's actually the impact of this that interests me more - what is the effect of the media being funded in large part by drug companies? I'm not the first to note that organizations are significantly influenced by their funding sources. Companies that live on advertising dollars only exist so long as they serve their purpose for the companies doing the advertising. It's no stretch, therefore, to say that the major TV news networks exist in their current, lucrative, form, because of funds generated by selling drugs. They are, essentially, in the business of selling drugs to their viewers. So, this leads me to a question: Could there possibly be any downside to getting our news from drug dealers?
Yeah, it's a rhetorical one (you know where this is going). We'd like to think that if something important were happening in the world, those watching the news would be aware. If there was a mass shooting with 10 dead, we'd hear about it. So what if there was a problem with 1,000 times as many dead, wouldn't it be in every headline? Well, that problem exists but it’s not getting nearly enough coverage. The problem I’m referring to is, of course, drug overdoses.
It's not a new problem. One could mark the rise of the current era of prescription opioid overdoses as beginning in 1996, the year Purdue Pharma introduced OxyContin. Sales were just $48 million dollars that first year, but it was aggressively marketed and promoted. According to one study, “One of the critical foundations of Purdue's marketing plan for OxyContin was to target the physicians who were the highest prescribers for opioids across the country… A lucrative bonus system encouraged sales representatives to increase sales of OxyContin in their territories, resulting in a large number of visits to physicians with high rates of opioid prescriptions, as well as a multifaceted information campaign aimed at them." Soon, OxyContin became a household name. And despite how dangerous it is, these drugs were being heavily promoted.
Not only did they push hard to sell it, but they downplayed the risk. "A consistent feature in the promotion and marketing of OxyContin was a systematic effort to minimize the risk of addiction in the use of opioids for the treatment of chronic non–cancer-related pain." Purdue trained its sales representatives to carry the message that the risk of addiction was “less than one percent”, a statement that you can see repeated in this commercial for OxyContin on Youtube.
THIS IS COMPLETELY UNTRUE. That same study found that "Prescription drug abuse in a substantial minority of chronic-pain patients has been demonstrated in studies by Fishbain et al. (3%–18% of patients), Hoffman et al. (23%), Kouyanou et al. (12%), Chabal et al. (34%), Katz et al. (43%), Reid et al. (24%–31%), and Michna et al. (45%)."
Where was the media to call them on their lies? Nowhere.
A false message about its addictiveness got out unchallenged, and the drug spread. By the year 2000, sales had grown to over a billion dollars. Even though by then the deaths had started racking up, the aggressive marketing hadn't slowed. In 2001, "Purdue paid $40 million in sales incentive bonuses to its sales representatives that year." Still, it continued, and "by 2002, unintentional overdose deaths from prescription opioids surpassed those from heroin and cocaine nationwide." All of a sudden, a legal drug is killing more people than illegal ones. But even that didn't stop its rise. "The high availability of OxyContin correlated with increased abuse, diversion, and addiction, and by 2004 OxyContin had become a leading drug of abuse in the United States."
Again, look at the numbers here. If anything close to these numbers was happening in another industry it would be headline news. Who was bringing this up? Where was the investigative reporting?
But this isn't an article about OxyContin or anything else that happened a decade ago. It's about how it's ALL HAPPENING AGAIN. Everything that we went through is happening right now with fentanyl.
According to the CDC, "in 2018, 67,367 drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States". (I know - I mentioned this same figure in my last post. That's OK. This figure needs to be discussed far more than it has been.)
Note: The CDC site I linked to about drug overdose deaths has updated the numbers since I originally wrote this. It use to say "Synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, are now the most common drugs involved in drug overdose deaths in the United States. In 2017, 59.8 percent of opioid-related deaths involved fentanyl compared to 14.3 percent in 2010."
We should be talking so much more about this. It's finally getting press now, after hundreds of thousands of deaths. What if another industry had caused that many deaths? But why was it allowed to cause so much damage for so long? Because the news cycle is driven by those same drug dealers.
The fact that they drive the news and are controlled by drug companies has been a major factor behind why these drugs have killed so many people with such limited fanfare. It's long past time to stop getting our information from drug dealers.
P.S.
I should note that none of this is to say that opioids don't have a place in modern medical treatment. They certainly do and have made many people's lives better. However, the risks should be clearly stated, not downplayed. Treatment protocols should ensure that they are being used in the best possible way.