WEST VIRGINIA — Pharmaceutical companies are sure winning in the epidemic of addiction in America. We trust them since most Americans live on multiple medications. They have our interests at heart. Sure.
Yet, these Pharmaceutical companies manufactured drugs they knew created addicts. Now they are poised to make as much money on the drugs that “treat” or “revive” the addict.
This clearly isn’t profit driven, is it? This isn’t creating and then capitalizing on addiction and death and treatment. Sure.
In 1996, when OxyContin came out, it produced $45 million in sales. By 2000, it was up to $1.1 billion. By 2010, it was at $3.1 billion. In the end, one family made $35 billion from this pill. Too often, it happened in Appalachia. Few jobs, No Hope, plenty of Pain Pills.
Purdue Pharma settled in 2015 with Kentucky on a suit concerning their misleading marketing of OxyContin. They admitted to creating their own fake scientific charts and more. Of course, we’d have seen far more lawsuits if more politicians were not in Big Pharma’s pockets. The Sackler family, which owns Purdue Pharma, is the 16th richest family in the country. They claim much of the increase in wealth came on the heels of the success of Oxycontin.
Sure. It was a success. A deadly one, but who cares? These are only junkies’ lives. Except some used to be something else, if lucky enough to escape being born addicted. The odds are more bleak these days. Bleak to the tune of 25% of babies born in West Virginia addicted at birth. In my area, at least 50% are born to addicts . . . their bodies programmed from the womb to need a high to feel “normal.”
Choices. Like when our Politicians accept huge contributions from Big Pharma companies.
Choices . . . folks mainly talk about the addict’s choice. They never talk about the lack of choice of the teenager who was born addicted. They never talk about the injured combat veteran who came back from a war told to take this “non-addictive” medication. Where was his choice? They don’t talk about the cancer patients given these drugs who beat cancer to be addicts. Do you know the story behind the Junkie you point at?
Far too few are angry about the “eyes open” choices made by Pharmaceutical companies who created, lied and pushed powerful drugs they knew people, for the most part, could never let go of once hooked.
And we sure refuse to talk about the fact that our government created this mess, and we keep letting this same government continue flopping around in the vomit and muck we all collectively had a hand in because we were quiet through it all.
It is so much easier, you know, to blame the dirty, disheveled addict on the corner of the gas station. The billionaire executives are so clean and pretty and fancy. Surely they aren’t to blame. Neither are those sweet talking political friends of ours. Rich and Fabulous and Never Accountable. That is the American Dream.
So we continue on. We keep creating addicts by government funded “addiction clinics” where we buy more “drugs” from companies that help create the addiction problem. Drugs all bought from Big Pharmaceutical companies.
At which point the masses dance in the streets and sing, “Ding Dong, Ding Dong, the Wicked Addict is Dead!”
BUT WAIT! Not before he created two or three babies who are also born into addiction, assuring the survival of the cash cow more affectionately known as “A Junkie.”
And the cycle of profit is secured, the seats elected are secure, and all of America is at rest.
See thevegetarianhomesteader.com/2016/09/appalachian-addicts-creating-addicts.html for the full version of this article.
Appalachian addicts: Creating addicts and ‘treating,’ reviving and securing the next generation of addicts
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