Thousands of lawsuits across the United States have accused a drug company owned by the billionaire Sackler family of using false claims to push highly addictive opioids on an unsuspecting nation, fueling the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history.Once it becomes clear to the Chinese government that the Sacklers' company, Mundipharma, is getting a few hundred thousand Chinese addicted to opioids to enrichen a Western family, they'll react by charging the Chinese executives of Mundipharma with narcotics trafficking and shoot them.
Yet, even as its U.S. drugmaker collapses under the charges, another company owned by the family has used the same tactics to peddle its signature painkiller, OxyContin, in China, according to interviews with current and former employees and documents obtained by the Associated Press.
The Sackler family may want to stay clear of Chinese territory for the foreseeable future. But if they don't, and if what I just posited happens to them, few tears will be shed by those who aren't related to them.
6 comments:
Given the advancement of limited capitalism in China, perhaps they now ask you if you’d like to super-size the bullet you’re about to receive? Let’s them charge the family more.
The real crime committed with opioids. Are all those whom desperately need pain relief yet now because of abusers and new laws cannot get them.
I say give the people what they want ! Who gives a rats ass if those who use opioids for fun, OD and die ? Their life...
Don't make those of us with chronic long term pain , suffer.
Spud, I agree, somewhat. Those who are in chronic pain are being hung out to dry.
But still, there is no reasonable doubt that the Sackler family of pharmaceutical companies closed their eyes to widespread abuse of their drugs, as long as the checks cleared. Only in a matter of degree do they differ from El Chapo.
I see this as an action adventure movie: Green Dragon Strike, with the Rock and John Lone as the Eurasian Inspector from Taiwan. Steven Seagal can play the Trump-like villain, without any CGI.
closed their eyes to widespread abuse of their drugs, as long as the checks cleared.
This is the same logic that Glock should have known that they were selling more than the legitimate number of guns, and should be liable for the excess.
I want enough opiates available that every single person in legitimate pain gets enough, no matter how much is diverted to feeding recreational use, no matter how many recreational users overdose. Everything I've seen is that we have a relatively small problem with misdirected prescription opioids, a relatively small problem with legitimate users turning into abusers, and a huge problem with illegally manufactured fentanyl-laced drugs being sold as something safer.
There's a race and class component to this story. What the Sacklers did that got so much negative attention was get white, middle class people hooked on a product they sold as being safer than it is.
Poor folks and people of color don't make even local headlines when they OD on whatever was sold to them as China White, but nice, upstanding white kids do.
Then, people want to know how they could have gotten addicted when they otherwise seemed so functional and normal. That's the sort of scrutiny that exposed Oxycontin for what it really is: timed release morphine sulfate.
It should be noted that without the media exposure brought on by the new class of users dropping like flies, there wouldn't be the newly onerous restrictions on opioid painkillers.
I won't even get into the economic aspect of addiction, but it exists, and if you want to know more about it, look up deaths of despair.
As for China, I just remember Hunter S. Thompson mocking the Reagan administration's anti-drug campaign by noting that every government in China for millennia has sworn it was going to crush the opium trade, yet the price of opium on the streets of Singapore is roughly the same as it was in 900 BC.
-Doug in Oakland
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