Miscarriage of Justice, the Opioid Crisis 9-3-2019

3, September 2019              Miscarriage of Justice, the Opioid Crisis


Gross miscarriage of justice continues to be a depressing fact of life in America.  Trillions of dollars has been squandered from endless wars driven by misguided political leaders intoxicated by US “super military power.” All the guilty (Bush jnr), Cheney, Rumsfeld. . ., escaped punishment. The U.S. attorney general during the 2008 financial crisis failed to punish bankers responsible for rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted corruption.  The unbridled greed of drug companies responsible for the death of thousands of Americans in the Opioid crisis has escaped punishment.  A stunning Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation by Eric Eyre in the Charleston Gazette-Mail revealed drug distributors shipped almost 9 million hydrocodone pills to one pharmacy in the town of Kermit, West Virginia, population 392.  Pharmaceutical companies who profited from the Opioid crisis were 1. Purdue Pharma 2. Abbott Labs 3. Johnson & Johnson 4. Pfizer.


254 million opioid prescriptions were filled in 2010 alone, enough to medicate every adult in the U. S. for a month on a round-the-clock basis. In that same year, pharmaceutical companies generated revenues of $11 billion from opioid sales alone.


Johnson & Johnson retained the services of consultants McKinsey & Company to identify opportunities to sell more Opioids and beat the competition unconcerned their drugs could send more and more Americans to their early graves. The broader push was to wean patients off lower doses and on to Johnson & Johnson’s more powerful lethal drugs. J & J misrepresented the dangers of opioid addiction to doctors, manipulated medical research, and helped drive an epidemic that has claimed 400,000 lives over the past two decades. J &J fine of $572 million will hardly serve as a deterrent. What is sorely needed is the prosecution of executives who profit from these criminal enterprises. A long prison term would be a good start. $572 million can easily be dismissed as the cost of doing business.